T-R PHOTO BY ROBERT MAHARRY Lisa Cantrell poses for a photo with one of her paintings currently on display at the Marshalltown Arts and Civic Center (MACC). She has also been working to incorporate cast off materials into wearable works of art.

Lisa Cantrell may be new to Marshalltown, but she’s already connected with the city’s local art scene. Her painting “Roots” is on display as part of the “Seeing Anew: A Local View” exhibit at the Marshalltown Arts and Civic Center, now until July 23. A portrait artist for 25 years, her latest pieces incorporate cast off materials into wearable works of art.

A native of Alabama, she, husband Michael, and family moved to Marshalltown about two years ago from Sioux Falls, SD. She studied art at Jacksonville State University, imbued with a love of art from a tender age.

“I remember being as young as five years old, wanting to be an artist, and career goals sort of changed through my childhood, as things started to become interesting to me, but in the end, I could not get away from the fact that the art is just part of who I am,” she recalled.

A former certified nurses aide (CNA), Cantrell is a full-time artist and parent. Due to her health, she will be phasing out portrait commission work.

“My physical limitations come from Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, and I have had a long time goal of using my art to raise awareness of EDS. So moving forward, with what my body can handle and what my soul needs, I do plan to gear some of my art toward free expression and jewelry making,” she explained. “I think when I was young, I really had the desire to sort of prove that I was good. And to me, proving that you were good was being able to draw realistic people — really hyper-realistic things. So for the majority of my career, that’s what I’ve done. But I’m really struggling to be able to sit at my desk for the same durations of time that I used to, and I really have just found a lot of joy lately in painting freely, and I really enjoyed the piece that I just did for the show at the MACC.”

Ehlers-Danlos syndrome is a group of inherited disorders that affect connective tissues including skin, joints and blood vessel walls, resulting in overly flexible joints and stretchy, fragile skin.

T-R PHOTO BY ROBERT MAHARRY
A sampling of Cantrell’s wearable works of art are arranged on a table at the MACC.

Cantrell’s wearable art utilizes scraps destined for the trash such as pencil shavings, swatch towels (paper towels), foam, moss, or acrylic shavings — collected during the creation of a specific piece of artwork — and gives them a second life.

She sets the raw materials in UV reactive resin, then fashions them into settings for earrings, bracelets and necklaces.

“I’m upcycling things that would normally be thrown away. Everyone who owns a piece of this jewelry owns a small piece of art making process itself,” she noted. “Each remnant is unique to the piece of art it was used to create, so these jewelry pieces can never be recreated once they are gone. I include a small print of the corresponding artwork with each piece of jewelry.”

Cantrell said the objective of creating wearable art is twofold: having smaller items available for purchase in her Etsy shop, and offering unique pieces you won’t find anywhere else. She wanted to avoid merely offering prints or anything resembling a “trinket.”

“It just sort of occurred to me one night, looking at one of those paper towels, that this is so pretty — even though it’s what I clean my brush with — the colors are so pretty. It’s a shame to throw this away and not do something with it. It just clicked. It’s kind of hard to explain,” she said of the inspiration. “Those actually tend to be my favorite, because the paper towel sort of disappears in the resin and you just see these huge pops of color.”

No more than five to 10 pieces are made from a particular remnant. While her inventory is expanding, it will consistently be limited.

“The materials will always, first and foremost, depend on the artwork itself that it’s from. I want to plan the jewelry from the artwork, not the other way around,” she said. “It’s just anything I have on hand, and the sky’s the limit on what it could be in the future.”

Her items are available on Etsy: LCantrellStudios with art viewable on Instagram: lisa.a.cantrell. She may be reached at: artistlisacantrell@gmail.com.