Bio
Elizabeth Emery is a multidisciplinary artist working in various mediums and across genres. Her sculptures and paintings reference movement, gravity, and the experience of the body in chaotic surroundings. Her work has been exhibited at museums and galleries across the United States including Museum of Modern Art Cleveland, Hammond Harkins Gallery, and Bunnell Arts Gallery in Alaska. She has also developed several series of silkscreen monoprint collage drawings for public commissions in hospitals and a library. Her work has been supported by the Ohio Arts Council, Rasmuson Foundation, and New York Foundation for the Arts, among others. Emery has been awarded residencies at Haystack, Jentel Foundation, Rasmuson Foundation, and FRONT International. Her work is in collections including at The Cleveland Clinic, Progressive Insurance, American Greetings, Rockefeller Collection, Westin Hotel Cleveland, and Schein-Joseph International Museum of Ceramic Art.
As an extension of her creative work and a former professional athlete, Emery operates the podcast, Hear Her Sports, which invites conversation around women’s sports. Through interviews, advocacy, and writing she celebrates individual female athletes who represent a range of backgrounds, perspectives and issues. A special edition of Hear Her Sports was recently commissioned as part of FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art. This collection of audio stories was originally presented by the Cleveland YWCA and is now housed in the Sports Research Center at Cleveland Public Library. Emery holds an MFA in ceramic sculpture from Alfred University. She now lives in Cleveland where her studio is inside a foreclosed house. Whatever her medium -- sound, ceramic, or collage -- Elizabeth Emery responds to the world with creativity, passion, and a desire to connect and make things better.
Statement
The theme of my current body of work is a translation of nature to abstraction. The recent acrylic paintings derive from breathing, moving through space outdoors, and detecting an organizing structure of shapes and colors underneath the seeming chaos of landscape, both natural and urban. Equally important are color, texture, the materiality of the surface and paint, and the visible remnants of movement and gesture created by the brush and my arm. I’m attracted to the contrasts of controlled and unbounded, linear and loose, action and stillness, confidence and hesitation.