(This is Not a) Love Song
September 8 - October 16, 2016
reception: Thursday, September 8, 6pm - 9pm
Thursday, September 29, 6pmVerge Center for the Arts is pleased to announce the second series installment of UC Davis MFA alumni exhibitions, (This is Not a) Love Song by Elisabeth Higgins O’Connor.
This show is one of four shows being held in celebration of the partnership between Verge Center for the Arts and the Manetti Shrem Museum of Art at UC Davis, opening November 13th. Verge, in collaboration with Bay Area artist and UC Davis alumna Lisa Rybovich Crallé, is curating the festivities for the grand opening weekend of the Manetti Shrem. For more information, please visit manettishrem.org.
(This is Not a) Love Song is by Sacramento-based artist, Elisabeth Higgins O’Connor. O’Connor’s colossal sculptures are created from quilts, bedsheets and various domestic textiles that are layered onto armatures. The results are creatures that are reminiscent of well-loved stuffed animals, yet monstrous due to its size. Each sculpture elicits a certain pathos, with an expression that often straddles two opposite states such as tender and grotesque, light and dark, or sweet and horrific, connecting them to viewers through emotion and physicality.
Artist Information
Elisabeth Higgins O’Connor, received her B.F.A. from California State University, Long Beach in 1995; and her M.F.A. from the University of California, Davis in 2005. She has shown extensively in California in solo and group exhibitions, as well as group exhibitions throughout the U.S. including Suplerflat x Juxtapoz in Seattle, Washington, the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, Wisconsin, and the John Elder Gallery and CUE Arts Foundation in New York City.
Solo exhibitions and installations include the Charlie James Gallery, Los Angeles; David Salow Gallery, Los Angeles; the Society for Contemporary Craft in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Suyama Space, Seattle, Washington, the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery and Weber State University, Utah. Elisabeth’s work has been featured or reviewed in Juxtapoz Magazine, ArtForum, Beautiful Decay, Artillery Magazine, the L.A. Weekly, Artweek, Square Cylinder, the Los Angeles Times, KQED Art School, the Stranger, THE Magazine and the Huffington Post.
Grants, fellowships and awards include a 2005 Joan Mitchell Foundation M.F.A. Fellowship; multiple research and graduate fellowships from the University of California, Davis in 2004 and 2003; a 2012 Artist-in-Residence Fellowship from the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art in Omaha, Nebraska, and was an artist-in-residence /faculty at the University of Washington, Seattle in 2014. she has twice been invited to work at the Kohler Company’s Arts/Industry residency in Kohler, Wisconsin. Elisabeth is a full-time studio artist and has taught studio art classes at the University of Washington, Seattle, Cal State University, Long Beach and UC Davis.