Mark Lorah describes his process as “bottom-up.” His materials — which include corrugated plastic packaging, scraps of felt and even wrecked car parts abandoned by the side of the road — almost seem to find him. He intuits what they want to become through trial and error, folding one way and then another, combining unrelated objects whose surfaces or forms have an affinity. “The Invention of Intention,” his solo show on view at the Front in Montpelier, showcases playful, spontaneous sculptures. “Cloud Machine,” a tower of different colors of wire tied in a loose grid, seems to radiate energy out from its yellow center. “Already Here,” made from riveted plastic, is a blocky but vaguely human-shaped form that looks like it slipped on a banana peel.
Lorah also presents paintings, all of them featuring abstracted faces. Some are brightly colored; others focus almost entirely on texture, incorporating velvety flocked fabric or mounds of wire and thread. He isn’t interested in portraits as much as in the structure of the human face, he said at the show’s reception, and in using its familiar features as a jumping-off point for defining space. “I can’t make a painting,” he said in the show’s press release, “unless I make a sculpture.”
‘Mark Lorah: The Invention of Intention’ On view through November 29 at the Front in Montpelier. An artist talk is Tuesday, November 17, 6 p.m.
This article appears in Winter Preview • 2026.
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