‘INSTAR’ by Pam Longobardi is on view at Sandler Hudson Gallery through August 3. (Photographs by Isadora Pennington)
Award-winning contemporary artist, environmentalist, art activist and professor are just some of Pam Longobardi’s titles.
A professor of art at Georgia State University since 1997, Longobardi’s extensive CV includes numerous artist residencies, awards and special recognitions and a long list of group and solo shows spanning nearly two decades. Her current exhibition, INSTAR (on view at Sandler Hudson Gallery through August 3) features a selection of abstracted compositions on copper, a few works on paper and a series of micro-collages. At the gallery’s front desk, magnifying glasses are available to anyone who wants to take a closer look at the works on the walls.
A deep and lasting love for the environment has long been at the heart of Longobardi’s artistic practice. Growing up in proximity to the beach in New Jersey as the daughter of an ocean lifeguard and diving champion, she gained a unique perspective on the power and majesty of our planet’s oceans. Witnessing the aftermath of the plastic waste that washed up on nearby shores inspired her to consider humanity’s impact on the planet through discarded items and became central to her art activism.
The breadth of Longobardi’s artistic career spans mediums including photography, sculpture, assemblage, collage, painting and alternative processes and is united by a shared concern for the planet’s well-being. She considers the role of humans in nature and conveys that relationship through additive processes of layered paper, sculptural compositions of found objects and the interactions of paints and corrosive liquids.
Longobardi’s father was a biochemist who worked for Union Carbide Company, and she said that seeing him involved with some of the earliest developments of plastic products sparked her curiosity. When he brought home experiments and demonstrated them on her kitchen counter, a young Longobardi was fascinated by the process. “I ended up getting a degree in science because, for me, it’s like art and science are two sides of the same coin or maybe two halves of my own brain — or something like that.”
To follow his dreams, Longobardi’s father moved the family down to Atlanta to start a new business, albeit a short-lived passion. Her father then held a series of interesting jobs and hobbies, becoming a stockbroker, a hang-glider pilot and even opening his own rock climbing school in 1960. “He was a dreamer,” she told me. “He was like, intrepid, you know? Nothing ever got in his way.”
After graduating with a BFA from the University of Georgia, Longobardi’s path led her out West, where she earned her MFA at Montana State University. During this phase of her life, she was married to a cowboy and lived on a large sprawling ranch, but she felt a consistent, deep yearning to get back to science. “It was really isolating, but it was kind of cool, too,” she said of the experience.
The next phase of her life found Longobardi in San Francisco, working in experimental printmaking, before heading back to the Southeast and landing a teaching job at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. “Appalachia wasn’t my thing,” she said. “I landed an interview at GSU and ended up moving down.”
As a professor, she found a home for herself at Georgia State University, where she has been teaching ever since. “I love the people, I love the students. That’s why I’ve stayed there so long, you know,” she told me. “It couldn’t be better, really. My colleagues are fantastic.”
Looking around at the works on view in INSTAR, Longobardi shared that she considers herself a conceptual artist who is “deeply embedded in materials and materiality,” and her fascination with chemistry is perhaps most evident in her copper pieces. The compositions are organically born through a series of chemical reactions, the majority of the elements in them being various patinas.
“It’s like wild nature, uncontrolled,” said Longobardi of the practice, noting that she enjoys using materials that are industrial and not intended for fine art to create these works. “It’s sort of like the idea of paving over paradise, because once I put those down, I can never go back to what it was before.” From the impulsive, experimental approach to those first chemical reactions to the later, more thoughtful additions of tiny figures and miniature trees, the process represents a kind of collision of both forces and ideas.
“In the beginning, I really strove for this one world where nature was untouched, and then as humans have developed in my lifetime, we were just coming in and almost overriding. So there’s this collision now.” Though classically trained and experienced in making realistic paintings in oils, these days, Longobardi finds no motivation to work in that type of art. “Right now, I’m not interested in doing that; I don’t feel like I have the time. I feel like there’s an urgency to do these things,” she said.
Though the small scale and careful control evident in Longobardi’s currency pieces is in distinct contrast to the large, loose, paper-based and copper pieces in INSTAR, they represent another exploration of value through art. She enjoys collecting defunct currency from other countries and then cutting it up and carefully layering it into miniature vistas. “I consider it like a found encyclopedia of value,” she said, noting that the imagery on money from various countries can indicate the values of their origins. Some feature nature, animals and landscapes, while others may have figures, buildings and other symbolism.
By cutting up the currency and assembling it into new compositions, Longobardi is playing with their value — once cut, the money can no longer be used for its intended purpose — but after being reconfigured as fine art, the works take on an altogether new value on the walls of a gallery.
Ultimately, the works on display at INSTAR can be viewed as a continuation of the ideas Longobardi has been exploring through other media, including sculptural reclaimed plastic works included in last year’s Atlanta Art Fair as part of her Drifters Project. It’s a conversation that is not finished yet — and may never be — regarding humanity’s impact on the environment as seen through plastic innovation through industrial chemical reactions and the inevitable waste that comes along with these developments.
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Isadora Pennington is senior editor of art + design and dance. An experienced writer and photographer with a deep love for the arts, Isadora founded the Sketchbook newsletter with Rough Draft Atlanta in 2022. She is also president of the Avondale Arts Alliance and director of the Avondale Arts Center.
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