The Weather Station
September 18-November 7, 2026
Essay by Brian Hitselberger from The Weather Station:
First and foremost, Lisa Walcott is an observer: of human behavior, of the spaces we inhabit, and of the objects we use to navigate our lives. For the artist, bodily sensations like boredom or anticipation are starting points for sculptures – the artist observes these qualities in herself and in others, taking note of how these internal experiences (felt) are made manifest by our bodies (seen).
Simple gestures like the tapping of one’s foot or the adjustment of a shirt collar are of particular interest to Walcott, who translates these gestures through her unique approach to found-object assemblage. Generally relying on mass-produced objects like shelving units, resistance bands, or deconstructed home goods, the artist’s twin processes of repurposing and resurfacing alter these materials, unifying them into oddly familiar, freestanding sculpture often scaled to the size of a person. Frequently, Walcott will incorporate motors and sensors into her work in order to introduce subtle movements, further lending these pieces a sense of the uncanny.
A Soft Punch to the Gut references the body through its various appendages, two of which read as legs supporting the vertical weight of the piece. “Support” is a crucial notion for A Soft Punch, which is literally made from support structures. Walcott incorporates twisted metal shelving, a partial crutch, and rubberized tool dip to create the work – each a material intended to carry, bear or hold in some way. Towards the center (or solar plexus) of the piece, an altered body massager endlessly rotates a pair of bulb syringes. The repetition feels probing, satellite-like – as if searching for signals of a body in need.
Multiple Inputs incorporates a repurposed lampshade perched horizontally on top of a central organic form, which has been completely flocked with brown insulation. The concentric rings of the shade reference once again a satellite, this time angled towards the origin of an inaudible broadcast. Just visible throughout the piece are the antennae of multiple baby monitors, each picking up on their own transmissions. If we read Multiple Inputs as a kind of figure, the various receivers in the piece – both literal and figurative – imagine the body as a processing zone: one where signals from multiple sources might be triaged, recorded, and synthesized.
To state the obvious: human behavior varies from person to person, widely. But our behavior shifts depending on the spaces we inhabit at any given time; the bodily cues that signal anticipation while standing in line at the movie theater will look a lot different than when sitting in a doctor’s office. In her exhibitions and installations, Walcott is attentive to these nuances of a context, often bringing together different groupings of sculptures to yield fresh interpretations from each. With Holding Pattern for Now, Walcott brings together a group of recent works from her studio alongside several new pieces created specifically for this exhibition to evoke the gallery’s previous function as a waiting room.
Prior to its current life as a studio and project space, The Weather Station was home to Thieme & Adair, a CPA firm whose primary office occupied this space for years (these days, the Thieme & Adair firm is located just across town on Columbia Street, under the name Thieme, Adair & Riley CPA). In 2022, the various offices formerly occupied by accountants were re-imagined as artists’ workspaces, while the front room that was once a reception area for clients became our exhibition space. Although it’s been almost 10 years since our gallery was used as a waiting room, close examination of the floors and walls reveals traces of benches, a desk, and multiple inputs for modems and fax machines. The first year that The Weather Station opened for exhibitions, a visitor to the gallery who grew up in Lafayette vividly recalled a childhood memory of “sitting in this room, waiting on my parents while they did their taxes, and feeling so, so bored.”
For Walcott, waiting is a complex experience – we can wait with boredom (like our gallery visitor), or we can wait nervously. We might settle into waiting with calm, or we might wait with a sense of giddy eagerness. With Holding Pattern for Now, her installation for The Weather Station, Walcott intends to explore this divergence, thinking through the complexity of a body in a waiting room. “I am interested in translating these states primarily through posture, gesture, material, and form,” the artist writes in an email to the gallery. “Together, the sculptures will explore waiting as a physical condition—how we hold ourselves, occupy space, manage our bodies, and respond to uncertainty when we cannot control what happens next.”
For the artist, the waiting room setting of the gallery is critical, as visitors to the exhibition become participants in the group, as opposed to only observers. “[The sculptures] will be arranged to create relationships of proximity, avoidance, attention, support, and social distance that the viewer must physically navigate,” Walcott explains. “As visitors enter and move through the space, they become part of this temporary community of people waiting, potentially recognizing their own habits and bodily responses in the figures.”
