Elizabeth Turk

Bush Wren (Model)

2019

Born in Pasadena and raised in Orange County, Elizabeth Turk earned her M.F.A. at the Rinehart School of Sculpture, Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore. In Turk’s work, the shape of the line is created by extreme loss. That is, the reductive process of carving creates a positive, fragile form in which the absence of the original material is a focus. Turk encourages us to consider how nature has shaped these organic materials long before the artist’s manipulation of them into new forms. When viewed as components in a complex natural system, their singular beauty and inherent mystery is revealed. Turk compels us to view works of art not only as objects to be coveted and collected, but also as expressions of the natural world and our evolving relation to it. A recipient of numerous awards, including a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (2010), a Barnett and Annalee Newman Foundation Fellowship (2010), and a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship (2011), Turk is internationally recognized for transforming her signature medium of marble into strikingly intricate objects that defy convention and challenge our preconceptions of what marble can do. Through the use of electric grinders, dental tools...

Elegant and understated, the beauty of calligraphic scripts has resonated across cultures and time. Elizabeth Turk: Written in Stone marks the change caused by technological communic...

Elegant and understated, the beauty of calligraphic scripts has resonated across cultures and time. Elizabeth Turk: Written in Stone marks the change caused by technological communic...

Elegant and understated, the beauty of calligraphic scripts has resonated across cultures and time. Elizabeth Turk: Written in Stone marks the change caused by technological communic...

Elegant and understated, the beauty of calligraphic scripts has resonated across cultures and time. Elizabeth Turk: Written in Stone marks the change caused by technological communic...

Elegant and understated, the beauty of calligraphic scripts has resonated across cultures and time. Elizabeth Turk: Written in Stone marks the change caused by technological communic...

Origami/kinetic artpiece, folds completely flat. Provides a fun and strong visual illusion , with a feeling of jelly. Signed and numbered 1/6, dated 2020. Led pedestal comes extra. It is optional, but recommended (looks wonderful in darkness). It can be taylor made...

Shelley Heffler was born and raised in the Bronx. She attended the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York where she studied interior design, followed by a Bachelor’s Degree in Art. She graduated from Cal State Northridge with a Master’s degree in fine art followed by a teaching credential. She traveled extensively throughout Europe and Asia photographing...

Created in 1953, this Madoura big turned vase of white earthenware clay with decoration in engobes and paraffin (red, black), knife engraved is numbered from the edition of 75. This Picasso ceramic vase is stamped with the 'MADOURA PLEIN FEU' and 'EMPREINTE ORIGINALE DE PICASSO' pottery stamps on the bottom. A spectacular work to witness in person, Pablo Picasso Gros oiseau Picasso...

Joe Davidson’s recent body of work consists of interlocking forms stacked one on top of another. Upon closer inspection, one can see the remnants of the ...

The sunflower and the bouquet is an idea that has been floating around in the artist's head for years. It starts with the notion of the still life, the most basic subject when approaching visual art. It's the attempt to look at that which is full of life, yet by acknowledging its existence, one understands that beauty is temporary and will fade. This series starts with the flower, the symbol of fleeing beauty. By taking this character and turning it into a cast object, the artist has turned it into an icon, further removed from reality by bleeding it of color. The sunflowers then become beautiful shadows their former selves, as dying coral becomes enticing when it bleaches. They are elegant reminders of their past, whilst also becoming new figures that reference archaic notes of classical beauty expressed monochromatic hues. STATEMENT In the end, gravity always wins. It is the blunt, immutable force that has a constant effect, keeping us on the ground and ultimately pulling us into it. Sculpture by its very nature is in conversation with this pull, at times enjoying and acknowledging it, and at times trying to hide and defy it. My work recognizes the force of gravity, sometimes tacitly and sometimes overtly. It is a practice of mixing the delicate with the ordinary. I have been mining the contrasts of sculpture, relishing the materiality while also attempting to address the ephemeral. Because sculpture is so heavily rooted in the ground, one has to accept its materiality. Yet, some of the most effective work I have witnessed is that which attempts transcendence. It is that steady push and pull between mass and lightness, solidity and absence, form and void. Additionally, I am drawn towards familiar objects and associations that are embedded within them. Current work makes reference to visual anchors such as bodily forms, sagging, or bloating. Whether the product is a still life created in Scotch tape or a bouquet composed of plaster flowers, I look to the fantastic as a goal in my work. The work is intensely representational in content but without clearly assigned meaning, thus creating a disquiet. In this way I think in a surrealist vein, looking to traditional figures like Eva Hesse and Piero Manzoni, and contemporary figures like Robert Gober and Matthew Barney. The juxtaposition of the seemingly simple streamline objects with this disquiet adds a powerful force to the work, again symbolic of the contrast between the emotional life which defines us as humans and the compulsions and minutia that compose our daily lives. Joe Davidson

I want the viewer to have a sense of wonder and awe when looking at my work. We have all at one point or another picked up a stick from the ground—touched the wood, peeled the bark ...