Enigma by Lois Trader

November 6-25
Enigma by Lois Trader in the Atrium
Opening reception: Friday, November 6, 5:00-9:00 PM
Gallery hours: Monday-Friday, 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM & Saturday, 10:00 AM – 1:00 PM
The Emporium Center, 100 S. Gay Street, Knoxville, TN 37902

Enigma by Lois Trader in the Atrium

Enigma is about weakness, struggle, and the emotions we carry privately — the ones we’d never make public. These works don’t dress that up. They acknowledge it and invite you to acknowledge it too. Using found objects, foam clay, paper mâché, resin, metal, and materials drawn from everyday life, each piece reveals only part of its story. These works explore the disorientation of not belonging, evoke the restless 3 a.m. mind, trace grief from breaking to survival, and confront the silence left when something essential is gone. Enigma offers no resolution; it offers company.

My mixed-media sculptures and assemblages are figurative, emotional, and sometimes strange. I explore grief, caregiving, endurance, and the complicated grace of survival. I began making art in March 2023 at age 66, without formal training, after my mother’s death, while recovering from five years of caregiving during my mother’s dementia. I had things to say that had no other form. Four years later, I am still giving them form.

Lois Trader is a self-taught mixed-media sculptor and assemblage artist based in Loudon, Tennessee. Her work has appeared at the Knoxville Museum of Art, McGhee Tyson Airport, the Mythus National Juried Exhibition at the d’Art Center in Norfolk, Virginia, and in Novum Artis Magazine, as well as in exhibitions in California, Virginia, and Hawaii. Honors include a Certificate of Excellence at the Tennessee Juried Open Art Show; Second Place from the Tennessee Artists Association in 2024 and 2025; two years in a row, Honorable Mentions from the Oak Ridge Art Center Annual Juried Exhibition.

Artist Website: loistraderart.com

Facebook: facebook.com/loistraderart

Instagram: @loistraderart