bio


Elizabeth Emery grew up in gritty Philadelphia and pastoral Lawrenceville, NJ.  After getting her first bachelors degree in art history and italian studies from the University of Pennsylvania, she moved to New York City.  There, for seven years she designed textiles for clothing manufacturers.  Loving fabric but not the rag trade Elizabeth made a complete career change after discovering her athletic side and raced bicycles professionally for ten years, traveling all over the world and throughout the United States.  While Elizabeth still rides and runs, injury along with wanting to be home more, put an end to her competitive life. 


In first grade Elizabeth wanted to be an artist.  (She took her first ceramics class when she was eight years old and has been taking photographs at least since then.)  After cycling Elizabeth rediscovered her artistic dream and returned to school, earning an MFA in ceramics from The New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University, where she specialized in and ceramic-based mixed media sculpture & collaborative community projects.   Currently, Elizabeth splits her time between working at a community art center and in her own studio.

artist statement


My work is not about creating a linear narrative.  Instead, the arrangement of objects, colors, and textures provide a stream of consciousness-like exploration of thoughts, of emotions, of the past and the future.  These sculptures, therefore, become a physical manifestation of the mental flotsam and memories we collect of people and places—complete with uncanny juxtapositions, pattern and confusion, order and instability, the familiar and a fear of the unknown.  Tactile and solid, and yet simultaneously fragile, these wrapped bundles offer an opportunity to engage visually and intellectually with the surroundings.


I primarily work with ceramic, however, ultimately, texture and color are my core materials.  In placing one object next to another, it is the interplay of those qualities that excite me.  With the juxtaposition and range of materials it is often difficult to confidently understand what the material is.  Or one thing has been changed into something else – an inherently ceramic process: earth to stone.  Fabric, yarn and ribbon become hard and pointy.  Wax-coated clay looks unfired.  Unglazed slip looks like plaster.  Plaster is in the clay.  Fired clay is painted with ink.  Paint looks like glaze.   The aim is not deception but a twisting of preconceptions.  What appears to be, is not.  What you are sure of, is false. 


There is no question that what is being presented is something tied up – whether interpreted as nicely wrapped packages or as forcefully tied remnants of unpleasantness.  They are a little of both.  Experiencing or witnessing repeated daily inequalities are enough to warrant feelings of confinement, constraint, inability to move or do, as you’d like.  Hanging on the wall, collected in a row, or laid out for display, the disquieting creatures are reminders of daily horrors and the pain those injustices can cause, even while they exist in a colorful, playful world.  There is humor in the combinations, the movement, the strange ceramic lace, and colorful environment.  These living things are successfully trying to make their way even while bound.  We are doing what we can despite constraints.  We are human.



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