 |
Connie Zehr | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1938 (age 85–86) Evanston, Illinois, US |
| Education | |
| Occupation | Installation artist |
| Website | conniezehr |
Connie Zehr (born 1938) is an American installation artist whose work involves sand, clay, glass, and sculpture. Most notable for her mounded sand installations, one of Zehr's sand installations was exhibited at the 1975 Whitney Biennial. Additionally, Zehr's work is included in the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian.
As a child, Zehr was raised on her grandfather's Amish farm in Indiana. Her grandfather's farm was called Sand HiIl, a place where she played in dirt and sand as a child which she credits to her continued use of earth materials in her practice. [1] Zehr often shares a memory of when she was 6 years old receiving gifts at Christmas. She recounts that her mother received colored pencils while Zehr received perfume. She remembers distinctly saying that she should have received the colored pencils because she was "an artist." [2]
At 16 years old, and while in high school, Zehr lived in India for a short time while her father was there on a Point 4 program. While in India she helped a local artist in her studio. She credits this experience with being her first introduction to what an artist does. [2] On their way back home to Ohio, Zehr says the family travelled through Europe visiting museums.
Zehr studied briefly at Michigan State University before transferring to Ohio State University, noting finances as the reason for the transfer. [2]
In 1960, Zehr earned her BFA degree from Ohio State University. [3]
While at Ohio State, Zehr met fellow sculptor David Elder who was a Teaching assistant in one of her courses and whom she married upon graduation.[ citation needed ]
In 1964, while pregnant with her first child, Zehr and her husband moved to Los Angeles where she found a community of artists working with unconventional materials and experimentation which would later define the Light and Space Movement. Zehr mentions her contemporaries at the time, Barry Le Va, Allen Ruppersberg, Robert Irwin, and Judy Chicago, using "a variety of materials in unusual ways." [4] Zehr embraced this experimental process, dabbling in several emerging movement including earth art, conceptual art, feminist art, Op Art, and Minimalism. [4] Her installation works at this time were complex, but minimal, focusing on the use of silica sand in vast temporary exhibits.[ citation needed ]
Zehr mentioned seeing and being inspired by one of Judy Chicago's Smoke pieces as the first time she saw a work of art that was ephemeral and "relied on your visual memory."[ citation needed ] Zehr also credits being inspired at this time by an installation of talcum work by Barry Le Va.
Zehr's first exhibition was held at Mount San Antonio College in the late 1960s and was called "Mound Fields", consisting of mounds of sand that people could walk amongst and between.[ citation needed ]
In 1975, Zehr was invited to be part of the Whitney Biennial [5] where she exhibited a large, elongated mound of sand. [ citation needed ]
In 1982, Zehr began teaching art at the Claremont Graduate University in Southern California while continuing to exhibit nationally and internationally. While at Claremont, Zehr began to expand her installation practice by incorporating glass into her temporary installations. [1]
In 1987, the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery (Los Angeles, California) held an exhibition retrospective of Zehr's work where in its 10,000 sq ft. space, she recreated installations of her six major sand works. [3]
In 1997, ten years later, the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery again held an exhibition of Zehr's work where over the span of three months, she created three new installations.[ citation needed ]
After teaching at Claremont Graduate University during 1982–2009, Zehr retired as a Professor Emeritus.[ citation needed ]
In 2010, Zehr left California and moved to Horseheads, New York.[ citation needed ]
Zehr considers her installations as paintings with the floor being a large canvas. Before conceptualizing her installation, she needs to know the traffic flow of the room and where the doors are located because she says she prefers people to be able to walk around her installations.[ citation needed ] In her early work, Zehr would often create a grid on the floor using tape to mark the mounds and establish the work's diameter. Often she marked the major elements and then went back to fill them in. [2]
Zehr mentions never using tools to create her installations and equates this decision with being a "feminine" decision based on women "being practical people, hav[ing] to do things by themselves." [2] Her work is scaled to her own body.
Zehr's installation exhibitions have been created nationally and internationally in numerous galleries and museums, including creating on-site installations in museums and galleries nationally and internationally, e.g.: The Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago, Illinois); The Whitney Museum of American Art (New York City, New York); Taipei Fine Art Museum (Taipei, Taiwan); Pasadena Art Museum (Pasadena, California); Wadsworth Atheneum (Hartford, Connecticut); Salvatori Ala Galeria (Milan, Italy); and university galleries.[ citation needed ]
Zehr's work is included as part of the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian. [6]
Raymond Pettibon is an American artist who lives and works in New York City. Pettibon came to prominence in the early 1980s in the southern California punk rock scene, creating posters and album art mainly for groups on SST Records, owned and operated by his older brother, Greg Ginn. He has subsequently become widely recognized in the fine art world for using American iconography variously pulled from literature, art history, philosophy, and religion to politics, sport, and sexuality.
Barbara Kruger is an American conceptual artist and collagist associated with the Pictures Generation. She is most known for her collage style that consists of black-and-white photographs, overlaid with declarative captions, stated in white-on-red Futura Bold Oblique or Helvetica Ultra Condensed text. The phrases in her works often include pronouns such as "you", "your", "I", "we", and "they", addressing cultural constructions of power, identity, consumerism, and sexuality. Kruger's artistic mediums include photography, sculpture, graphic design, architecture, as well as video and audio installations.
Kenneth Feingold is a contemporary American artist based in New York City. He has been exhibiting his work in video, drawing, film, sculpture, photography, and installations since 1974. He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship (2004) and a Rockefeller Foundation Media Arts Fellowship (2003) and has taught at Princeton University and Cooper Union for the Advancement of Art and Science, among others. His works have been shown at the Museum of Modern Art, NY; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Tate Liverpool, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, among others.
Tara Donovan is an American sculptor who lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Her large-scale installations, sculptures, drawings, and prints utilize everyday objects to explore the transformative effects of accumulation and aggregation. Known for her commitment to process, she has earned acclaim for her ability to exploit the inherent physical characteristics of an object in order to transform it into works that generate unique perceptual phenomena and atmospheric effects. Her work has been conceptually linked to an art historical lineage that includes Postminimalism and Process artists such as Eva Hesse, Jackie Winsor, Richard Serra, and Robert Morris, along with Light and Space artists such as Mary Corse, Helen Pashgian, Robert Irwin, and James Turrell.
Sarah Sze is an American artist and professor of visual arts at Columbia University. Sze's work explores the role of technology, information, and memory with objects in contemporary life utilizing everyday materials. Her work often represents objects caught in suspension. Drawing from Modernist traditions, Sze confronts the relationship between low-value mass-produced objects in high-value institutions, creating the sense that everyday life objects can be art. She has exhibited internationally and her works are in the collections of several major museums.
Alison Saar is a Los Angeles-based sculptor, mixed-media, and installation artist. Her artwork focuses on the African diaspora and black female identity and is influenced by African, Caribbean, and Latin American folk art and spirituality. Saar is well known for "transforming found objects to reflect themes of cultural and social identity, history, and religion." Saar credits her parents, collagist and assemblage artist Betye Saar and painter and art conservator Richard Saar, for her early exposure to are and to these metaphysical and spiritual practices. Saar followed in her parents footsteps along with her sisters, Lezley Saar and Tracye Saar-Cavanaugh who are also artists. Saar has been a practicing artist for many years, exhibiting in galleries around the world as well as installing public art works in New York City. She has received achievement awards from institutions including the New York City Art Commission as well as the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston.
Kim Dingle is a Los Angeles-based contemporary artist working across painting, sculpture, photography, found imagery, and installation. Her practice explores themes of American culture, history, and gender politics through both figurative and abstract approaches.
Zoe Strauss is an American photographer and a nominee member of Magnum Photos. She uses Philadelphia as a primary setting and subject for her work. Curator Peter Barberie identifies her as a street photographer, like Walker Evans or Robert Frank, and has said "the woman and man on the street, yearning to be heard, are the basis of her art."
Wynne Greenwood is a queer and lesbian feminist performance artist who works in various media such as installation art, photography, filmmaking and music. One of her well known projects include the electropop and video project group, Tracy + the Plastics. Wynne works out of Seattle, Washington, and was an instructor in the Department of Art and Art History at Seattle University.
Chakaia Booker is an American sculptor known for creating monumental, abstract works for both the gallery and outdoor public spaces. Booker’s works are contained in more than 40 public collections and have been exhibited across the United States, Europe, Africa, and Asia. Booker was included in the 2000 Whitney Biennial, received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2005, and an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Art in 2001. Booker has lived and worked in New York City’s East Village since the early 1980s and maintains a production studio in Allentown, Pennsylvania.
Anne Wilson is a Chicago-based visual artist. Wilson creates sculpture, drawings, Internet projects, photography, performance, and DVD stop motion animations employing table linens, bed sheets, human hair, lace, thread and wire. Her work extends the traditional processes of fiber art to other media. Wilson is a professor in the Department of Fiber and Material Studies at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Michelle Stuart is an American multidisciplinary artist known for her sculpture, painting and environmental art. She is based in New York City.
Virginia Berresford was a painter, printmaker, and art gallery owner. Her works are exhibited in major galleries.
Peter Sarkisian is an American new media artist based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He combines video projection and sculpture to create hybrid-format, multi-media installations.
Cady Noland is an American sculptor, printmaker, and installation artist who primarily works with found objects and appropriated images. Her work, often made with objects denoting violence, industry, and American patriotism, is primarily focused on the notion of the failed promise of the American Dream, the divide between fame and anonymity, and violence in American society, among other themes. Noland is also known for her numerous disputes and lawsuits with museums, galleries, and collectors over their handling of her work, as well as for her reluctance to be publicly identified, having only ever allowed two photographs of herself to be publicly released.
R. H. Quaytman is an American contemporary artist, best known for paintings on wood panels, using abstract and photographic elements in site-specific "Chapters", now numbering 35. Each chapter is guided by architectural, historical and social characteristics of the original site. Since 2008, her work has been collected by a number of modern art museums. She is also an educator and author based in Connecticut.
Jordan Wolfson is an American visual artist who lives in Los Angeles. He has worked in video and film, in sculptural installation, and in virtual reality.
Mary Miss is an American artist and designer. Her work has crossed boundaries between architecture, landscape architecture, engineering and urban design. Her installations are collaborative in nature: she has worked with scientists, historians, designers, and public administrators. She is primarily interested in how to engage the public in decoding their surrounding environment.
Patsy Ann Norvell (1942–2013) was an American visual artist who worked in sculpture, installation art and public art. She was a pioneering feminist artist active in the Women's movement since 1969. In 1972 she was a founder of A.I.R. Gallery which was the first cooperative gallery in the U.S. that showed solely women's work. Her work has been exhibited in galleries and museums in the U.S. and abroad. She received numerous grants, awards and residencies for her achievements, including the Pollock-Krasner Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. She created permanent public art works for the New York City subway system, designed and created lobby and plaza installations in Los Angeles, CA, New Brunswick, NJ, Bridgeport, CT, and Bethesda, MD. Her work has received historical and critical acclaim, and has been written about in books, journals and newspapers including, Art in the Land: A Critical Anthology of Environmental Art, in Sculpture (magazine), the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times and numerous other publications.
Michael Leslie Brewster was an American artist, recognized for coining the term “acoustic sculpture.” He worked with sound to create sonic environments beginning in the 1970s until 2016. His works were shown across the United States and Europe, and are in permanent collections, notably the Solomon Guggenheim Museum, the Fondo per Arte Italiano, Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, and the Giuseppe Panza Collection.
| International | |
|---|---|
| Artists | |
