We recently connected with Lori Ryerson and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Lori, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.

If someone had told me that I would end up being a full time artist once my kids were grown and gone on to their own lives, I would have suggested they seek professional help! I never thought of myself as “an artist”; certainly not a visual one. That’s what OTHER people did, with paintbrushes and chisels. Oh, there were the early days, the years I spent as a youngster, when I thought I was going to be a singer and actor, but that was a different kind of art. And that dream disappeared so many years ago, when I realized I just wasn’t cut out for that world. Throughout all of that, the camera (my chosen tool for art) was always with me. When I was younger, when I went on vacations, when my kids were born, when we travelled, there was always a camera (many years before the ubiquitous cell phone version!). But it wasn’t until I made a solo trip to Egypt in 2010 that it became apparent to me that I *needed* the camera. Well, I needed some skills, first. I spent a night sleeping out in the Western Sahara, and had no images to show for it, because at that point, I didn’t know how to make a camera do what I needed it to do to capture those sights. I came back from that trip and decided I finally had a reason to go to college for a post-secondary education. I enrolled in the local college, for three years of night school, to earn some creds and knowledge in the field. Once I graduated from that, I met someone who looked at my work and asked my why I wasn’t selling it. Wow…selling it? It hadn’t occurred to me that I could! After about 3 years participating in all kinds of art shows and outdoor summer fairs, all the while continuing to fit that around my day job, it became apparent to me that it was MORE important for me to spend ALL my time with my camera, and not be working in the corporate world. At the end of 2016, after 30 years of work in the corporate universe (PR/Communications/Association Management) I retired all my biz clients, and decided to pursue a full time career as a photographic artist.

Lori, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Like many photographers, I more or less “fell into” what I do, which is fine art photography. That means I don’t shoot products or weddings (although I can; I have the skills, I just choose not to apply them that way!).

While I cannot paint the side of a barn even if you gave me a giant roller, nonetheless, I see the world with a painter’s eye. If you and I look at a scene together, I will likely see the scene differently than you do. I’m looking for what I call the mysteries in the mundane. I see the Dali-esque distortions of the streetscape reflected in the windows of the skyscrapers. I see the silhouetted images created by the leaves through the fabric of my neighbour’s tent at an outdoor art show. I see a story in the rusted remains of a broken car, left to rot for decades out in Death Valley, and I wonder who owned the car, why did he abandon it, did it he proudly show off that turquoise metal beauty to all his friends and family before he headed off to pan for gold? I look to tell these stories through the lens of my camera.

In today’s world, where everything around us emits sound and noise (the traffic, your email, the refrigerator, even the washing machine sings) I use my images to remind people to stop and listen to the silence. I don’t think we give enough weight and time to just stop and think (rather than react), to just listen and absorb what is and isn’t going on around us. I try to create images that capture the silence.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on NFTs. (Note: this is for education/entertainment purposes only, readers should not construe this as advice).

Because I am a photographer, and operate in the digital universe, it is just *expected* that I will be in favour of NFTs. Which in the overall scheme of things, I am not. The CONCEPT behind NFTs is fantastic. In that once a piece of art is created, whenever that piece of art sells, the creator will make something from that sale. That’s fantastic, because historically, that has never been so. BUT…the digital universe that is being underpinned to NFTs, that is to say, cryptocurrency…that I cannot support. As a (primarily) nature and landscape photographer, I spend a lot of time being protective of the environment. “Mining” crypto currency requires such a vast use of resources that I simply cannot condone it. On the art side of the NFT world, in a similar vein to the emperor’s non-existent clothing, I have not seen what I would consider quality work that would justify the kinds of numbers being generated. I think there’s a lot of smoke and mirrors involved still in the whole field of NFTs, and it is simply not a universe I aspire to gain a foothold into.

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

For some reason, we tend to think of artists as lesser beings, with lesser needs than, say, a computer programmer or a restauranteur. For instance…purchasers think nothing of “negotiating” with a random artist they have never met, trying to get the artist to reduce their stated cost. Think how that might translate into the real world: would you walk into a clothing store and immediately suggest to the retailer that the shirt you want should be sold to you at 50% off the retail price, just because you didn’t feel like paying that much? We do art shows outside, and tell artists “The show goes on, rain or shine”. Yet if we were selling clothing on a rack outside a shop, we would bring all the merchandise in to protect it!!!

We need to stop treating artists and creatives as if they hold lesser “weight” than a CEO or an engineer. We need to really look at the value that art brings to the world. My best example that I think everyone can relate to is the experience the world went through with COVID. At the beginning of the pandemic, the one thing that helped everyone get through the closures, the restrictions, the fear of the unknown was … art. We watched movies. We read books. We listened to music. Creators got online and created content. Museums suddenly thought outside the box, and created virtual experiences based on their collections. People posted and reposted hundreds and hundreds of hours of local artists, singing on their balconies, actors found ways to communicate virtually and created meaningful content online for people to watch, that made them feel less alone, that brought them cultures from other places on the planet.

All of that to say: we need to respect that the time and energy that artists and creatives bring to the world need to be reevaluated as a necessary component to keeping the WORLD community thriving. We educate through art, we communicate through art. We need to prove to our artists and creatives that we place a high value on the work they provide.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://loriryerson.ca/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/focalocity/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/focalocity/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/loriryerson/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/Focalocity

Image Credits
all art images: Lori Ryerson (portrait of Lori Ryerson in the field – Rita Zietsma Photography)