LAURA MORIARTY
Morphogenesis
November 14 – December 20, 2026
Lightforms Art Center is pleased to present an exhibition of beeswax sculptures and encaustic paintings by Laura Moriarty, a Hudson Valley artist whose process-driven work reveals depth and subtle movement inspired by geological processes and the passage of time. Working in layers of pigmented beeswax, Moriarty builds each work through cycles of layering, heating, erosion, and excavation, echoing the same forces that shape and reshape the earth over millennia.
The title Morphogenesis refers to the emergence and development of form. In Moriarty's work, the concept extends to the geological processes through which matter accumulates, shifts, breaks apart, and takes on new structures. Rather than simply depicting geological formations, Moriarty engages with processes of transformation through the physical act of making, allowing forms to emerge through the interaction of material, heat, and time.
Moriarty's sculptural objects resemble geological strata, mineral formations, and artifacts unearthed from the earth's interior. Their layered surfaces reveal intricate patterns of color, while the processes through which they are created suggest the gradual accumulation, disruption, and transformation of matter across geological time.
“As if dug from the center of the earth,” Moriarty writes of her sculptural objects, they often resemble scientific models or artifacts whose strata and embedded fragments reveal histories of climate shifts, planetary events, and cataclysmic disruptions.
The exhibition brings together Moriarty's beeswax sculptures and encaustic paintings, exploring the possibilities of wax as both a sculptural and painterly medium. Through the repeated application and removal of material, each work becomes a record of its own making. Layers of color accumulate and are exposed, suggesting the relationship between the visible surface of the earth and the vast histories contained beneath it.
Central to Moriarty's practice is the relationship between the immediate, physical act of making art and the immense timescales of natural transformation. Through her methodology, she explores how “the immediacy of the hand can translate a sense of deep time.” Her works invite viewers to encounter geological processes as tangible experiences of form and color.
Moriarty is a self-taught artist whose work has been exhibited at the Hunterdon Art Museum, Vassar College, Ithaca College, and the Walton Arts Center, among others. She has received two Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grants and an Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation Grant, and participated in residencies in Ireland, Iceland, and Michigan. In 2022, she completed Stream, a site-responsive installation at Albany International Airport. She lives and works in Rosendale, NY.
Through Morphogenesis, Moriarty brings the passage of geological time into intimate scale, revealing the processes of formation and transformation continuously at work within the material world.
This exhibition is curated by Finnish artist Sampsa Pirtola and presented in collaboration with Rudolf Steiner Library (www.rudolfsteinerlibrary.org). The hours for this exhibition are Thursdays–Sundays, 1–5pm. (Closed on Thanksgiving.) Visit www.lightformsartcenter.com for event details and more info.