Inspired by light and nature

It is always exciting for one artist to see another artist’s works at artist meetings. It was especially exciting to present Randi Nygaard Lium’s exhibition at the Aukrust Center in 2007. In common with Kjell Aukrust, Randi Lium’s’ roots are in Nord-Østerdalen.

Both Randi Nygaard Lium and Kjell Aukrust express how childhood and upbringing have contributed to forming them as artists and as human beings. Both declare their love of nature and landscapes—one in a naturalistic way and the other in a more abstract way.
“In the loom I find a possibility to express myself. The loom forms the frame for its own pictures. Through material, craft, form, and technique, I create a picture expressing my identity and belonging,” says Randi Nygaard Lium.

Randi belongs to a generation of women that early in life learnt the joy of having knowledge of handicrafts—a silent knowledge transferred from one generation to the next. She started with embroidery at the age of seven years, and “fell in love” with handicrafts. In her teenage years she sewed her own clothes, and after completing upper secondary education, she took a one-year course in weaving at the Craft School in Tynset before attending the Jutland Academy of Fine Arts in Århus, in Denmark.
Randi has received both a practical and theoretical education in art. She is an active artist and her daily work has been performed in public art and cultural institutions, originally as curator of the National Museum of Decorative Arts in Trondheim (1986–98) and thereafter as executive director of Trondheim Museum of Art (1998–2011).

Both the urge to create and the joy of creating are strong experiences for Randi Nygaard Lium. She finds it important to use her hands to express herself. “It gives a good feeling,” she informs, and it is important for her to have this opportunity in addition to her museum job.
Randi creates with pleasure in small scale—in miniature.

With stands of wool, silk, and linen, Randi has woven an image of winter in Nord-Østerdal, with the snow in all its nuances and shifting light. In the works Winter Light I and Winter Light II, which hang in The Centre for the Arts at Tynset we can see blue behind blue—colors characterizing the special light conditions. These works are quiet images, but nevertheless strong.

Randi plays with different themes such as identity, female identity, and identity bound to big cities and to the mountain region in Norway. She is secure in her handicraft, and therefore she can play with materials, and experiment and explore.

By taking into use paper as a material, Randi Nygaard Lium is an artist that has conquered boundaries in Norwegian weaving art. She weaves with paper yarn and paper cuts from weekly magazines. Through choosing paper, her use of color has become bolder. At the Aukrust Center exhibition, she showed works in large sizes and pictures woven with paper that had been painted with watercolors or embroidered.

andi’s generation of artists has contributed to textile art gaining the position that it deserves, namely as an autonomous art expression on the same level as sculpture and painting. Since her debut at The Artists’ Easter Exhibition in Århus in 1983, Randi Nygaard Lium has held an impressive number of exhibitions, in both Norway and Denmark.

Gunn Hvamstad
Director, Aukrust Center