Celeste LaForme is fascinated by loss, change, and time: watching wasp holes in the desert sand, scratching horse teeth from an arroyo wall, listening to the caucus of bird varieties calling to one another in a spruce and birch canopy, standing still for baby deer bones. These moments have the power to influence our beliefs and the way we interpret our own value and place. Her paintings, drawings, and performances explore grief, joy, difference, tradition, alienation, connectedness, motherhood, destruction, and self in the tension between open landscapes and the unseen boundaries that land ownership asserts on them, between natural beauty and the human impact on the environment, and between freedom and the invisible, intangible rules, obligations, and regulations that comprise our connections to other humans.
Celeste was born in Medanales, New Mexico in an old adobe home along the Rio Chama. She received her BFA from the University of New Mexico. She has worked in the arts in several capacities working with children, managing a non-profit organization in Portland, Oregon, teaching art to school age children in rural communities, and seven years employment in film as a scenic artist and paint foreman. Her accomplishents in fine art include large scale oil paintings and drawings, murals, performance and sound art. Currently Celeste lives and works in Maine and also remains an active participant in the art community of her native New Mexico, where her work is represented in both public and private collections.