Luiza Budea

(Above) Velvet

Luiza traded the big city for the allure of small-town charm nearly three years ago. As a Ridgefield resident, she fell in love with the community and became involved in organizing a series of art shows through Ridgefield Art on Main, as well as gracing Main Street with some muchappreciated examples of public art, rendered in the most ephemeral of materials: sidewalk chalk - a medium that fades with each footstep and raindrop leaving behind only memories. Fond memories, we hope.

Unknowingly, Luiza had tapped into the longest tradition of art made by women, the kōlam. Practiced for centuries, the kōlam is made using only the artist’s fingers drizzling rice flour always in symmetrical geometric abstract forms in front of homes and spaces in India. The kōlam are visual prayers, and are walked over all day every day, and gone by day’s end. Much like them, Luiza’s chalk drawings celebrate both the act of sharing a gift freely with everyone and the ephemeral nature of beauty, no matter how hard we may try to preserve it. Luiza believes that art is not just for looking at - but that art is intended to do something. Have a daily practice. With internal purpose.

By these and other less ephemeral means, she aspires to hint the infinite. Her artistic practice centers around endless patterns that are inherent in nature and therefore universal. She not only does chalk, however. Intermittently she uses some of the most enduring media and some of the most modern.

(Above) Gilded Splinters

(Above) Chalk drawing executed in front of RPAC Gallery on Main Street, Ridgefield.

RPAC Gallery Storefront rpacgallery.com/luiza-budea