Phyllis Green

Last updated
Phyllis Green
Born
Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S.
NationalityDual American and Canadian
Education University of California Los Angeles, University of Manitoba
Known forSculpture, ceramics, installation art, video, performance
Spouse Ave Pildas
Awards Guggenheim Fellowship, Pollock-Krasner Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Canada Council
Website Phyllis Green

Phyllis Green is an artist and educator based in the Los Angeles area. She has largely focused on sculpture using a wide range of materials and fabrication techniques to explore objects and their social context, gender politics, consumerism and spirituality, but has also produced video, installation and performance art. [1] [2] Critics characterize her work by its craft and engagement with surface appearance, diverse sources, unconventional juxtapositions, and grounding in the female body and metaphorical content. [3] [4] [1] Her early work grew out of 1970s feminism and consciousness-raising, while her later work has taken inspiration from the Vedanta branch of Hindu spirituality. [3] [5] [2] In 2018, Sculpture critic Kay Whitney wrote, "Green's polymorphously perverse and experimental thinking counters art historical assumptions regarding gender and culture, while her pun-making glittering and whimsical imagery acts as a shadow-screen for the serious and profound." [1]

Contents

Green has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and grants from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts and Canada Council, among others. [6] [7] Her work belongs to museums including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), [8] Long Beach Museum of Art [9] and Winnipeg Art Gallery. [10]

Green is based in Santa Monica and is married to the photographer Ave Pildas. [11]

Phyllis Green, Infanta Margarita, ceramic, fabric and mixed media, 9" x 47" x 16", 1994-98. Phyllis Green Infanta Margarita.tif
Phyllis Green, Infanta Margarita, ceramic, fabric and mixed media, 9" x 47" x 16", 1994–98.

Life and career

Green was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota but grew up in Winnipeg, Canada. She attended the University of Manitoba, where she earned a BA in English in 1971. [3] After a move to Vancouver, she turned to art, spurred by the influence of feminism. Her 1975 work, Boob Tree, took on iconic status when it was selected as the catalog-cover and poster image for the all-women exhibition "Woman as Viewer" at the Winnipeg Art Gallery. [12] [13] [3] The primal, comical sculpture consisted of a palm tree-style trunk topped with pink breasts crocheted in yarn over plastic armatures; it embodied feminist practices of provocatively reclaiming female anatomy and parodying over-serious masculine sculpture with pop-inflected soft forms and "women's" crafts. [3] Thirty-six years later, Green restored Boob Tree for the show "Winter Kept Us Warm" (2012, Plug In ICA, Winnipeg). [14]

In 1978, Green moved to California to pursue graduate studies at the University of California Los Angeles, studying ceramics with Adrian Saxe and earning an MFA in 1981. [3] [15] She subsequently received early recognition for a solo show at Artspace (1982) [16] and groups exhibitions at the Downey Museum of Art, [17] Laguna Art Museum [18] and Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery. [19]

Since then, Green has had solo exhibitions at Jan Baum Gallery (1988–94), LASCA Gallery (1996), Lemon Sky Projects (1998), Vielmetter Los Angeles (2003), Los Angeles Central Library (2013), LAM Gallery (2015) and Chimento Contemporary (2017, 2019), as well as several university galleries. [20] [21] [22] [3] In 2011, a survey titled "Splendid Entities: 25 Years of Objects by Phyllis Green" opened at the Ben Maltz Gallery at Otis College of Art and Design. [23] Green has also appeared in the Los Angeles County Art Museum shows "From Head To Toe: Concepts of the Body in 20th Century Art" (1998) and "Made in California: Art, Image and Identity" (2000) and group shows at the Museum of Contemporary Art Shanghai, Long Beach Museum of Art, the Getty Center, Tucson Museum of Art, Hammer Museum and Craft Contemporary. [24] [25] [26]

Work and reception

Artwork (1986–2013)

Green's work in the 1980s focused on small freestanding sculpture and wall-reliefs that were spare in materials and coloration and concise in terms of formal vocabulary. [27] Her "Sticks and Bones" series (1986–92) featured elegantly choreographed, industrially transformed branch and bone configurations whose textures and tonalities merged the fabricated and organic. [27] [3] A 1989 Art In America review described the series as achieving a "balletic linearity" that evoked human kinetics (e.g., dance, wrestling, flight) and provoked anthropomorphic predilections. [27] [23]

In the early 1990s, Green returned to concerns involving domesticity, "women's" craft techniques, and reference to the female body in playful work that blended ostentatious decoration, baroque sight gags and lavish materials. [4] [1] She received substantial recognition for her "Turkish Bath" series (1993–98), which was inspired by the 1862 Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres painting of the same name. [4] [28] The series consisted of eccentric, exotic objects placed on overstuffed pillows and silk-swathed pedestals (e.g., Infanta Margarita, 1994–98) that Los Angeles Times critic Susan Kandel wrote, distilled things— exoticism, animal magnetism, forbidden pleasure, post-coital bliss—"into sculptural essences" that were "both hyperbolic and irresistible [and] as perverse and as concentrated as good perfume." [4] Art historian Jeanne Willette contrasted Ingres's display of abundant female flesh for male consumption with Green's feminist approach, which "sought to redeem femininity by addressing issues of decoration and ornament." [29]

Green's sculpture in the 2000s continued to employ unorthodox juxtapositions of materials, techniques, pop, historical and fashion references, and pointed messages about gender, the female body and consumerism. [23] [1] L12 (Duchamp Party) (2001) was a scaled-up replica of Duchamp's Bottle Rack readymade equipped with clear acrylic-disc platforms bearing a dozen cast ceramic sculptures of a popular 1960s hairdo; it poked fun at gendered aspects of Duchamp's work and tat male-dominated minimalism. [3] [1] The ceramic hairdos reappeared in Green's show, "Amelia and the Spinning Heads" (2003, Vielmetter Los Angeles), which addressed the mystery of Amelia Earhart's disappearance, and more broadly, sought the recuperation of consummate feminine ideals; it included three silver spinning "Amelia" heads (depictions of her tousled hairstyle), an animated film incorporating them, other iconic "hairdo" sculptures, and garments. [5] [1]

An Artillery review of Green's 2011 survey exhibition recognized the collected hybrid and mixed-media works (including the "Odd Old Things" series, 2008–10) for their intentionally mismatched materials, meaningful contradictions and "risk-taking and originality." [23]

Phyllis Green, Five Sheaths, cotton fabric and wood, garments hung on wooden hanger; installation width 144", each garment 78" tall; 2017. Phyllis Green Five Sheaths.jpg
Phyllis Green, Five Sheaths, cotton fabric and wood, garments hung on wooden hanger; installation width 144”, each garment 78” tall; 2017.

In 2014, Green began producing objects and performative devices that were influenced by her association with the Christopher Isherwood Foundation and the writer's immersion in spiritual philosophy, Vedanta. [2] [22] [1] These pieces combined pop culture with Vedic-influenced imagery and parables as a metaphor for maintaining spiritual aspirations with humor amid the challenges of contemporary life. [1]

Green's exhibition "Walking the Walk" (2015, LAM Gallery) featured tongue-in-cheek works based on a passage recommending that a disciple approach a guru "with wood on your head" (i.e., fuel as an offering); among them was Coco Carrier, a stylish "hat" from which a miniature forest of branches rose. [2] [22] She also created a series of "high-design, full-body walkers" she could enter and wheel around in, each equipped with a unique cloak, accessories and a moveable pedestal carrying stacks of wood or white porcelain surrogates. [2] [22]

The show "Life After Life After Life" (2017, Chimento Contemporary) offered a similar approach with works such as Tree and Birds (2017)—a part-sculpture, part-costume work with a bird crowning the top like a hat; it referenced a Vedic text describing a tree surrounded by fluttering, ascending birds. [1] [3] Five Sheaths consisted of five cape-like garments hanging from the ceiling on branch-like hooks, which referenced fashion, the Hindu notion of five layers of being and the proverb that "we change lives like we change clothes"; conceptually, it conflated reincarnation with the dizzying mix of roles faced by contemporary women. [1] [21] Like her earlier "walkers," the objects were accompanied by a photograph of Green modelling the entire set that suggested an ironic "enlightenment fashion shoot." [3] [1]

Teaching and other professional activities

Green taught art for over twenty-five years, most notably at Loyola Marymount University (1989–2011), University of California Los Angeles (1996 t0 2008), and University of Southern California (2002 to 2015). [30] [15] She also taught for shorter periods at Emily Carr College of Art, Claremont Graduate University, Glendale Community College and California State University-Fullerton.

Green was chair of the Public Art Committee of the City of Santa Monica from 2002 to 2004 and was appointed to the Santa Monica Arts Commission in 2000, serving as its chair from 2006 to 2008. She was a founding board member of the Christopher Isherwood Foundation and served as its deputy director from 2011 to 2018. [3] From 1996 to 1998, she hosted the radio show "LOOK/ hear" on KXLU 88.9 FM in Los Angeles. [31] [15]

Recognition

Green has received a Guggenheim Fellowship (2014), as well as grants from the City of Santa Monica, California Community Foundation, Durfee Foundation, Pollock-Krasner Foundation, California Arts Council, National Endowment for the Arts, Canada Council and British Columbia Cultural Fund. [6] [7] [32]

Her work belongs to the Aldrich Collection, Ceramics Research Center, (Arizona State University), [33] Department of Cultural Affairs City of Los Angeles, Long Beach Museum of Art, [9] Los Angeles County Museum of Art, [8] Salk Collection and Winnipeg Art Gallery, [10] among other art collections.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Norton Simon Museum</span> American art museum in California

The Norton Simon Museum is an art museum located in Pasadena, California. It was previously known as the Pasadena Art Institute and the Pasadena Art Museum and displays numerous sculptures on its grounds.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Los Angeles County Museum of Art</span> Art museum in Los Angeles, California, United States

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is an art museum located on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles. LACMA is on Museum Row, adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Norton Simon</span> American industrialist and philanthropist

Norton Winfred Simon was an American industrialist and philanthropist. He was at one time one of the wealthiest men in America. At the time of his death, he had amassed a net worth of nearly US$10 billion.

Alison Saar is a Los Angeles, California 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."

Elizabeth Neel is an American artist based in New York.

Olga Koumoundouros is an American sculptor based in Los Angeles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Andrea Bowers</span> American visual artist

Andrea Bowers is a Los Angeles-based American artist working in a variety of media including video, drawing, and installation. Her work has been exhibited around the world, including museums and galleries in Germany, Greece, and Tokyo. Her work was included in the 2004 Whitney Biennial and 2008 California Biennial. She is on the graduate faculty at Otis College of Art and Design.

Jennifer Bolande is an American postconceptual artist whose work employs various media—primarily photography, sculpture, film and site-specific installations in which she explores affinities between particular sets of objects and images and the mercurial meanings they manufacture.

Patricia Faure was an American art dealer, photographer, and gallery owner, based in Los Angeles.

Charles Gaines is an American artist whose work interrogates the discourse of aesthetics, politics, and philosophy. Taking the form of drawings, photographic series and video installations, the work consistently involves the use of systems, predominantly in the form of the grid, often in combination with photography. His work is rooted in Conceptual Art – in dialogue with artists such as Sol LeWitt, Lawrence Weiner and Mel Bochner – and Gaines is committed to its tenets of engaging cognition and language. As one of the only African-American conceptual artists working in the 1970s, a time when political expressionism was a prevailing concern among African-American artists, Gaines was an outlier in his pursuit of abstraction and non-didactic approach to race and politics. There is a strong musical thread running through much of Gaines' work, evident in his repeated use of musical scores as well in his engagement with the idea of indeterminacy, as similar to John Cage and Sol LeWitt.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arlene Shechet</span> American sculptor

Arlene Shechet is an American artist known for her inventive approach to sculpture. Her work is often described as polymorphous, combining materials, styles and finishes in unconventional ways. Of particular note is her extensive use of fired clay as a sculptural medium, as porcelain and ceramic have a long history of exclusion in contemporary art due to their association with practical and decorative objects.

Cynthia Lahti is an American contemporary artist from Portland, Oregon, who works in many mediums: "from collage to ceramics, altered books, and painting".

Farrah Karapetian is an American visual artist. She works primarily in cameraless photography, incorporating multiple mediums in her process including sculpture, theatre, drawing, creative nonfiction, and social practice. She is especially known for her work that "marries two traditions in photography — that of the staged picture and of the image made without a camera." Recurrent concerns include the agency of the individual versus that of authority and the role of the body in determining that agency.

Hayal Pozanti is a Turkish-American artist, based in the United States. Pozanti became internationally known in the early 2010s for her bright abstract paintings of geometric forms, based on a hieroglyphic alphabet which Pozanti invented to reflect on the relationship between human behaviour, artificial intelligence and technology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Liz Young</span> American artist (1958–2020)

Liz Young was a Los Angeles-based artist known for diverse work investigating body- and nature-focused themes, such as loss, beauty, the inevitability of decay, and the fragility of life. She produced sculpture, installation, performance, painting, drawing and video incorporating fabricated and recontextualized found objects, organic materials, and processes from industrial metalworking to handicrafts, taxidermy and traditional art practices. Young exhibited throughout the United States and Europe, including solo shows at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), and alternative spaces such as Hallwalls, Randolph Street Gallery (Chicago) and New Langton Arts ; she participated in group shows at Exit Art, Art in the Anchorage, and Armory Center for the Arts, among others. Her art was discussed in ARTnews, Artforum, Frieze, Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, and The Village Voice, and is included in the LACMA permanent collection. Critic Peter Frank wrote that her work "reflects both on life's relentless erosion of body and spirit, and on our indomitable struggle against these nagging cruelties." Artillery Magazine critic Ezrha Jean Black called her 2017 installation a "mordant yet elegiac show" in which "craft bears out the work’s consciousness." In 2016, Young received a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship; she was recognized with awards from the Getty Trust and Andy Warhol Foundation, among others. Young lived and worked in Los Angeles from 1981.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gloria Kisch</span> American artist

Gloria Kisch (1941–2014) was an American artist and sculptor known especially for her early post-Minimalist paintings and wall sculptures, and her later large-scale work in metal.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lynn Aldrich</span> American sculptor

Lynn Aldrich is an American sculptor whose diverse works draw on a wide range of high and low cultural influences and materials. Her work can range from what art writers describe as "slyly Minimalist meditations" on color, light and space to whimsical "Home Depot Pop" that reveals and critiques the excesses—visual, formal and material—of unbridled consumption. Critics Leah Ollman and Claudine Ise of the Los Angeles Times have described Aldrich's art, respectively, as a "consumerist spin on the assemblage tradition" and a "witty and inventive brand of kitchen-sink Conceptualism" LA Weekly critic Doug Harvey calls her "one of the most under-recognized sculptors in L.A.," whose hallmarks are the poetic transformation of found/appropriated materials, formal inventiveness and restless eclecticism. Aldrich has exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA), Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Hammer Museum, Santa Monica Museum of Art, and venues throughout the United States and Europe. She has been recognized with a Guggenheim Fellowship (2014) and public art collection acquisitions by LACMA, MOCA Los Angeles and the Portland Art Museum, among others.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Maloney (art dealer)</span> American art dealer and appraiser

Michael Maloney is a Los Angeles-based art appraiser and art dealer. He owned and operated the Michael Maloney Gallery in Santa Monica, California (1985–90) and Maloney Fine Art in Culver City, California (2006–16), and since 1998 has pursued a career as an art appraiser and private dealer in Los Angeles and New York.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Judith Simonian</span> American painter

Judith Simonian is an American artist known for her montage-like paintings and early urban public art. She began her career as a significant participant in an emergent 1980s downtown Los Angeles art scene that spawned street art and performances, galleries and institutions such as Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE) and Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art (LAICA), before moving to New York City in 1985.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yunhee Min</span> South Korean-American artist

Yunhee Min is a Korean-American artist. She lives and works in Los Angeles, California. In 1991 she received a BFA from ArtCenter College of Design. In 1993 she attended the Kunstakademie, Düsseldorf as a guest student under Professor Günther Uecker. In 2007 she received an MA in Design Studies from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Whitney, Kay. "Serious Frills; A Conversation with Phyllis Green," Sculpture, Vol. 38, No. 2, p. 10–22. Retrieved October 13, 2023.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 Ollman, Leah. "With a wink, Phyllis Green makes it easier to walk the walk," Los Angeles Times, June 10, 2015. Retrieved October 13, 2023.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Harvey, Doug. "The Contrarian's Engagement: Current Figuration in the Art of Phyllis Green," Border Crossings, December 2018. P. 54–59. Retrieved October 13, 2023.
  4. 1 2 3 4 Kandel, Susan. "It's Hot and Steamy in Phyllis Green's 'Turkish Bath,'" Los Angeles Times, November 17, 1994, p. F13. Retrieved October 13, 2023.
  5. 1 2 Wood, Eve. “Phyllis Green Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects," Bridge Magazine, July 2003.
  6. 1 2 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Phyllis Green, Fellows. Retrieved October 13, 2023.
  7. 1 2 Pollock-Krasner Foundation. Phyllis Green, Past Recipients. Retrieved October 14, 2023.
  8. 1 2 Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Odalisque, Phyllis Green Collections. Retrieved October 13, 2023.
  9. 1 2 Long Beach Museum of Art. Sweep, Phyllis Green Objects. Retrieved October 13, 2023.
  10. 1 2 Winnipeg Art Gallery. Phyllis Green, Boob Tree, Collection. Retrieved October 13, 2023.
  11. ↑ "Interview with Ave Pildas". Street Photography Magazine. 2014-05-21. Retrieved 2020-10-13.
  12. ↑ Woman as Viewer. Winnipeg:Winnipeg Art Gallery
  13. ↑ Philinda Masters, "Women, Culture and Communication." Canadian Women's Issues: Twenty-five Years of Women's Activism in English-speaking Canada. Volume I. Ruth Roach Pierson et al.(eds.). Toronto: James Lorimer and Company. 1993. p. 398
  14. ↑ Phyllis Green, "Boob Tree Raises Cult", Artillery: Killer Text on Art, Vol 5 Issue 4, March/April 2011, pp 40-41.
  15. 1 2 3 USC Roski School of Art and Design. "Phyllis Green named a 2014 Guggenheim Fellow," News, April 2014. Retrieved October 13, 2023.
  16. ↑ Muchnic, Suzanne. Review, Los Angeles Times, June 4, 1982, Sect. 4, p. 14.
  17. ↑ McLoud, Mac. "A Clay Preface," Images and Issues, March/April, 1983, p. 52.
  18. ↑ Nicholson, Chuck. "Compact and Controlled," Artweek, May 31, 1986, p. 11.
  19. ↑ Muchnic, Suzanne. Review, "Newcomers: A Familiar Story," Los Angeles Times, October 17, 1987, Sect. 4, p. 5.
  20. ↑ McKenna, Kristine. "Wilshire Center," Los Angeles Times, September 12, 1986. Retrieved October 13, 2023.
  21. 1 2 Ollman, Leah. "When clothes are more than clothes: Phyllis Green’s designs are journeys, hung on a hanger," Los Angeles Times, November 20, 2017. Retrieved October 13, 2023.
  22. 1 2 3 4 O’Brien, John David. "Phyllis Green," Artillery, June 30, 2015. Retrieved October 14, 2023.
  23. 1 2 3 4 O’Brien, John David. "Phyllis Green: Ben Maltz Gallery," Artillery, May/June 2011.
  24. ↑ Wilson, William. "Head to Toe Mixes Education, Fun," Los Angeles Times, February 28, 1998. Retrieved October 13, 2023.
  25. ↑ Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Made in California: Art, Image, and Identity, 1900-2000, Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2000. Retrieved June 27, 2019.
  26. ↑ Ollman, Leah. "Fake fur, rubber, afghans: Craft museum unfurls some playful surprises in Material as Metaphor," Los Angeles Times, August 18, 2017. Retrieved October 13, 2023.
  27. 1 2 3 Anderson, Michael. "Phyllis Green at Jan Baum," Art In America, January 1989, p. 158–59.
  28. ↑ Pagel, David. "Hit-and-Miss Affair in 'Sexy' Show", Los Angeles Times, February 16, 1996, p. F24.
  29. ↑ Willette, Jeanne. "Floating Existences: Re-Writing Baudelaire for the Art of Los Angeles," Thought Work @ LA, Gordon Fuglie (ed.), Los Angeles: Loyola Marymount University, 1996.
  30. ↑ Scarlet Cheng. "Mud Gets off the Ground." Artillery. March/April 2016. P. 56
  31. ↑ Muchnic, Suzanne. Review, "Radio Art," Los Angeles Times, March 2, 1997. Retrieved October 13, 2023.
  32. ↑ Knight, Christopher. "A COLA That Refreshes." Los Angeles Times. May 27, 1997. F1.
  33. ↑ Ceramics Research Center. "And the Ceramics Collection Grows…, CRC Newsletter, Summer 2004. Retrieved October 13, 2023.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.