BY KAREN BOSSICK

Visual artist Laurie Victor Kay makes her home in Omaha, Neb., with her photographer husband Charles Kay.

But her muse lies underground in the subways of Paris and above ground in the parks of Venice and Luxembourg.

She photographs these places, then returns home where she spends hours digitally manipulating those photos to create symmetrical places that invite viewers to enter a magical realm.

Kay is currently showing many of these works at Gilman Contemporary in Ketchum, including works of symmetrical park pathways in Luxembourg, St. Tropez, Paris, Australia and Italy.

“Most of my metro works are taken in Paris because the metro has such a history there. I love architecture and what I love about metros is that they’re a place where people are passing in space. I love the movement,” she said pointing out one work that indeed captures the movement.

“I also like the psychology of being underground, but I want to focus on the brightness not the dark. There’s a universality to metros—anyone can go there. And the spaces are always changing.”

Laurie Victor Kay knew she would be a photographer from the time she received her first camera at 14. She studied painting at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and photography at Columbia College in Chicago.

She met her husband in a photo studio in 1996, and the two have been globe trotting ever since, looking for images that stir their creative juices.

They’re particularly captivated by the grandeur of places like Paris. They train their lenses on the details of staircases in theaters and balconies in cathedrals—things others might not notice while taking in the big picture.

Their list of clients include Fortune 500 corporations and celebrity foundations, including the Tiger Woods Foundation, Nike, Proctor and Gamble, Warren Buffett and AT&T. Many of their clients are captivated by the soothing symmetry of pathways that Victor Kay creates in celebrated public parks across the work.

In Thailand, where Charles Kay’s family is from, she took the branches of a rain tree, noted for its umbrella-shaped crown, and created a perfect symmetry with the branches reaching out to one another, creating a canopy. 

“Where they meet is where the magical perfection takes place,” she said.

“These pathways do not feel manipulated –they feel like a place I want to be,” she added. “I like the journey aspect. It’s a way to create this path I want viewers to enter. It’s just an interesting way to look at the world.”

 Kay is working on a number of new things. She’s working with the color blue in a line of work she calls Bleu on Blue, trying to see how many different ways she can push color. She’s experimenting with more abstraction and she’s utilizing cut paper in assemblage.

“I’m also working on pieces that show water and waves in slow motion,” she said. “I’m a surfer so I spend a lot of time in the water.”