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and you did not even know enough to be sorry
North Carolina Museum of Art
October 9, 2022- December 2023
West Building to the right of the entrance
This work presents the illusion of a beautiful disaster of a cast paper tree crashing through this wallpapered wall, bringing drywall, furniture, and lighting fixtures down with it - the aftermath of some catastrophic weather event. and you did not even know enough to be sorry regards our fleeting sense of safety and loss within these ‘unprecedented times.’ This scene of floral damask wallpaper and paper furniture are made to be a tragic spectacle through cast storm debris and deliberate deconstruction. When thinking about the sense of security that is associated with a home, we are far too often reminded of how delicate and fragile these structures can be. Yet our culture is slow to admit the frequency that the exterior world infiltrates our perfect spaces in ways that can be as small as an ant or as large as a 13’ tree limb.
The title is a line in Mary Oliver’s poem From the Book of Time.
Made with the help of: Tatum Eyre, Todd Bowser, Susanne Baker, Twenty 2 Wallpaper, Kaitlin Botts, and Kris Julio
Old Blush
K Contemporary
June 24 - August 5, 2023
1412 Wazee Street, Denver Colorado 80202
It has been a pleasure getting to know my new gallery through the process of putting this show together. This exhibit is a mixture of recent work and brand new pieces made using my new wallpaper design that is also on display at the North Carolina Museum of Art.
"For her inaugural show at K Contemporary, Elizabeth Alexander transforms the gallery’s Project Space into an abode of cast paper, porcelain, wallpaper, and other household objects. Old Blush explores the socio-cultural and psychological implications of American ideals around domesticity, status, and safety. Specifically, Elizabeth continues her foray into the aesthetic spectacle of natural disasters and how dwellings that presumably provide shelter and comfort get constantly bombarded by external weather events as well as internal emotional ones. She aestheticizes this calamity by combining natural and domestic materials in various states of decay and disintegration to create what she calls “beautiful disasters”. Floral wallpaper, designed by Elizabeth and based on historic patterns, serves as the installation’s distinctive backdrop with a succession of blooms systematically dying as the wallpaper pattern cascades down the gallery wall. - K Contemporary
Possibilities of Paper
The Mary M. Torggler Fine Arts Center
June 30- October 15, 2023
1 Avenue of the Arts, Newport News, VA 23606
Welder's Daughter: The Waiting Room will be featured in this exciting exhibition showcasing a variety of incredible artists working with paper. I am honored to be showing among many artists I admire.
"The wide-ranging exhibit will feature works from 13 artists from across the United States and Canada, who all work with paper a little differently. According to Holly Koons, executive director of the Torggler Center, the one thing the artists have in common is they are using paper in ways that are often unintentional or unanticipated.
“We have artists that are using techniques, in many cases time-honored techniques such as collage, paper cutting, folding, weaving, and other techniques that have been out there for a long time,” said Koons. “But they’re doing this either on a grand scale that is unusual or with a kind of precision that is quite remarkable. So, these artists are creating paper sculptures in ways that seem almost impossible.”
While there is no central theme to the exhibit, the artists are using reimagined common paper products such as books, piñatas, maps, and paper plates to create surprising new identities for everyday objects, while grappling with themes including identity, spirituality, history, the cosmos, and the creation and destruction of knowledge." -The Peninsula Chronicle
About Face
Fountain St Gallery
July 27–August 27, 2023
SoWa First Friday Art Walk: August 4 | 5–8 PM
460C Harrison Ave. Suite 2, Boston, MA 02118
A Mightier Work is Ahead: They Were Soldiers Indeed no.2 will be included in About Face at the Fountain St Gallery in Boston this summer.
"Beginning July 27, 2023, Fountain Street Gallery will present “About Face,” an exhibition of work selected from our annual international call for art. This year’s jurors, Michelle May and Payal Thiffault, founders of the independent visual art and lifestyle magazine Juniper Rag, invited visual commentary on artistic, personal, and cultural identity, as well as the politics of authority, epresentation, inclusion and exclusion. Featured are 37 artists working across various media, whose interpretations evidence a deep and resolute story of the human condition. Following their rigorous review and selection process, the jurors characterized the power of the show by saying, “the multiplicity found in this exhibition is the face of the world that confronts us every day, emotional and vulnerable, telling a universal story of an experience that unites us.” - Fountain St. Gallery
Too Much Is Just Right
The Legacy of Pattern and Decoration
February 2, 2023–May 29, 2023
2 South Pack Square
Asheville, NC 28801
Too Much Is Just Right: The Legacy of Pattern and Decoration features more than 70 artworks in an array of media from both the original time frame of the Pattern and Decoration movement, as well as contemporary artworks created between 1985 and the present. The artworks in this exhibition demonstrate the vibrant and varied approaches to pattern and decoration in art. Sections will explore the history of pattern and decoration’s use in American art during and after the now formally recognized movement was established. Artworks from the 21st century elucidate contemporary perspectives on the employment of pattern to inform visual vocabularies and investigations of diverse themes in the present day.
Artworks drawn from the Asheville Art Museum’s Collection join select major loans and feature Pattern and Decoration artists. The selected artists represent all media.
This exhibition is organized by the Asheville Art Museum and guest curated by Marilyn Laufer & Tom Butler. -Asheville Art Museum
Fucking Flowers
May 13 - June 10, 2023
1412 Wazee St
Denver, CO 80202
Fucking Flowers takes the art historical trope of still-life genre painting to new extremes. Featuring a bouquet of 10+ artists including Elizabeth Alexander, Marc Dennis, Andrew Jensdotter, Daisy Patton, Angel Ricardo Ricardo Rios, Nina Tichava, Jason Hackenwerth, Kristopher Wright, and Francisco Souto, the exhibition spans materials and styles with an array of mixed media art that ranges from the representational to the conceptual. This brazen, fun, spring-with-an-edge show is the antidote to a burly winter.
For thousands of years, flowers have been potent symbols in the visual and literary arts carrying coded meanings. Whether representing different gradations of love, purity, fecundity, spirituality, or decay, flowers show up at life’s most poignant occasions (births, weddings, deaths). They infiltrate fashion and décor and can be noxious or curative, fragrant or carnivorous. Inevitably, flowers begin by seducing us with their beauty. Fucking Flowers aims to do the same – seducing viewers with astonishing aesthetics into having more nuanced conversations about the nature of beauty, metaphor, exoticism, social justice, and human behavior.
The Aftermath
October 9, 2022
12-1:30pm
West Building to the right of the entrance
Experience a moving piece of art as dancers call upon themes reflected in Elizabeth Alexander’s newly installed work and you did not even know enough to be sorry. Referencing our fleeting sense of safety and loss within these “unprecedented times,” this scene of comfort and order becomes a beautiful disaster of paper storm debris mixed with deliberate deconstruction. Blakeney Bullock and Miles Yeung-Tieu move within Alexander’s site-specific installation to an original soundtrack by Todd Bowser.
The performers embody the great oscillation between immobility and mania that happens inside catastrophic weather events—tightness-holding despair on one side; beauty, relief, release, and mutual aid on the other. The body, like the storm, holds unknowable multitudes and can become a comfortable order or a tragic spectacle. What do these extremes do as characters in a duet? What relationships are created, projected, and witnessed? Drop in for a glimpse or stay for the full 90 minutes as this corner of West Building fills with ambient sound and movement.
IDEAL HOME: Objects of Desire
Ogden, Utah
August 12- October 16, 2022
This August, Ogden Contemporary Arts presents Ideal Home, featuring distinct bodies of work by multidisciplinary artists Elizabeth Alexander (Winston-Salem, North Carolina) and Kasey Lou Lindley (Salt Lake City, Utah). Together, the artists’ work represents unique processes in paper, collage and installation art, with connecting concepts that reflect on the idealism of home and environment in past and present-day America.
Elizabeth Alexander’s Objects of Desire explores the American idealism of home and the ways in which domestic perfection is at odds with the reality of humanity. Her installations utilize nostalgic, home-related objects that were once coveted symbols of success such as wallpaper, porcelain ware, and distinct furniture pieces in ways that insert chaotic beauty into spaces of domestic harmony. Her work unpacks the social, cultural and psychological implications of American idealism around domesticity, success and safety, representing home as a space that “serves both as a projection of our ideal self and one that houses our darkest and brightest moments.”
Our America/Whose America?
AUGUST 6 – OCTOBER 30, 2022
FERRIN CONTEMPORARY
at 1315 MASS MoCA Way
North Adams, MA 01247
Our America, Whose America will present a dialogue between contemporary artists and a collection of commercially produced ceramics. This collection of historical objects, collected across the span of several years by Founding Director Leslie Ferrin, are in the form of plates, souvenirs, and figurines from the early 19th through mid-20th centuries. The items were produced in England, Occupied Japan, and various factories in the USA. The exhibition title was chosen from a series of plates produced by Vernon Kiln that features illustrations of American scenes by the painter Rockwell Kent.
In response to this historical collection, contemporary works by nearly 30 participating artists will provide new context and interpretation of these profoundly powerful objects. Seen now, decades and in some cases centuries later, the narratives they deliver through image, characterization, and stereotype, whether overt and bombastic or subtle and cunning, form a collective memory that continues to impact the way people see themselves and others today. -Ferrin Contemporary
Imprinted: Illustrating Race
June 11 through October 30, 2022
9 Glendale Rd / Rte 183
Stockbridge , MA 01262
Imprinted: Illustrating Race examines the role of published images in shaping attitudes toward race and culture. Over 300 artworks and objects on view of widely circulated illustrated imagery will be on view, produced from the late eighteenth century to today, which have an impact on public perception about race in the United States. The exhibition will explore stereotypical racial representations that have been imprinted upon us through the mass publication of images. It culminates with the creative accomplishments of contemporary artists and publishers who have shifted the cultural narrative through the creation of positive, inclusive imagery emphasizing full agency and equity for all. -Norman Rockwell Museum
Nature Morte
Rowe Galleries at UNC Charlotte
Charlotte, NC
September 9, 2022 - tba
"Nature Morte" explores the still life tradition through works by major contemporary artists.
Rowe Galleries and the Department of Art & Art History are the first American hosts of a stunning exhibition developed by the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in London. Opening September 21, Nature Morte: Contemporary Artists Reinvigorate the Still Life Tradition seeks to illustrate how leading artists of the 21st century have reinvigorated still life, a genre strongly identified with the 16th and 17th centuries. This major exhibition will be one of the largest ever presented at the Rowe Galleries, with works displayed by national and international artists such as Gabriel Orozco, Wayne Thiebaud, Jennifer Steinkamp, and Donald Sultan, alongside works by local artists such as MyLoan Dinh, Linda Foard Roberts, and Andrew Leventis. A full list of exhibiting artists is below.
Coined in the South: 2022
Durham, NC
March 26, 2022-July 3, 2022
I am so pleased to announce that All Things Bright and Beautiful was selected for this show highlighting about 40 artists working in the Southeast. It is a diverse and dynamic exhibition.
I am extra pleased to announce that this installation was selected for the People's Choice Award in the show.
The Young Affiliates of the Mint, in collaboration with The Mint Museum, presents Coined in the South: 2022. .
Reckoning and Resilience:
North Carolina Art Now
Durham, NC
January 13 – July 10, 2022
I am so pleased to announce that A Mightier Work is Ahead is debuting among the work of 30 NC artists in Reckoning and Resilience. This show is absolutely worth a visit!
"Reckoning and Resilience: North Carolina Art Now brings together 30 emerging and established artists working across the state. This group survey, featuring approximately 100 works, presents an expansive view of contemporary art in North Carolina both in terms of regional geography and artistic approaches.
With media ranging from traditional drawing, painting, sculpture and photography, to ceramics, textiles, performance and experimental video, the selected artists explore themes surrounding historical and current events, identity, loss and remembrance, and trauma and healing. After two years marked by a global pandemic, political chaos, ongoing deadly racism and environmental injustice, the need to reexamine ourselves and the world around us has never been more urgent. The artists included in this exhibition invite us to reckon with hard truths, seek healing in collective reflection, and demand transformative action." -Nasher Museum
Break the Mold
New Takes on Traditional Art Making
September 25, 2021–January 30, 2022
East Building, Level B, Joyce W. Pope Gallery
I am so pleased to announce that The Great Enemy of Truth and Let Him Speak First are included among 25 incredible contemporary artists placed in conversation with historical objects at the North Carolina Museum of Art. This show is absolutely worth a visit!
"Tradition plays an uncomfortable role in contemporary art. Artists working today strive to make something new, to revolutionize subject matter or materials, or contribute something unexpected—but the art that came before provides an important context and, sometimes, much-needed contrast. The historic and the contemporary, then, feed each other in meaningful ways: contemporary art extends the lineage of these craft and artistic traditions, while historical work expands the context for the contemporary." -NCMA
Call & Response
Craft as a Tool for Activism
Museum of Craft and Design
July 30, 2021 - undetermined
Virtual Exhibition
Images of The Great Enemy of Truth will be included in the upcoming exhibition Call & Response: Craft as a Tool for Activism at the Museum of Craft and Design in San Francisco, CA. The show was juried by Glenn Adamson, Ebitenyefa Baralaye, and Nate Watson. I am one of 50 artists whose work you can view wherever you have an internet connection.
"The national reckoning for social justice spurred by protests and the Black Lives Matter movement has made clear that all museums and arts organizations must do better to represent, engage, financially support, and communicate with their BIPOC communities. “Craftivism” celebrates the power of craft to bring about political change. This juried exhibition intends to highlight artists that are working at this crucial intersection of craft and activism, uplifting their political ideals and their communities through their medium of choice." -MCD
Paper Routes
Women to Watch
October 08, 2020 - January 18, 2021
National Museum of Women in the Arts
1250 New York Ave, NW Washington DC 20005
I am beyond honored and excited to announce that my work was chosen to be a part of the exhibition Paper Routes: Women to Watch to represent the Massachusetts Committee, from which the nomination itself meant a lot to me.
Paper Routes, the sixth installment in NMWA’s Women to Watch exhibition series, showcases contemporary artists working in paper. Although the exhibition is no longer installed, there are plenty of virtual programming to enjoy.
Follow these links:
BUY THE CATALOG (its really great)
The Sum of Trifles
by Julia Ridley Smith
Holly II from Heirloom was selected to adorn the cover for The Sum of Trifles, a memoir by Julia Ridley Smith published by the University of Georgia Press. "When Julia Ridley Smith's parents died, they left behind a virtual museum of furniture, books, art, and artifacts. Between the contents of their home, the stock from their North Carolina antiques shop, and the ephemera of two lives lived, Smith faced a monumental task. What would she do with her parents' possessions?'"
It has always been a secret wish to see my work on the cover of a book, but I never really thought about the contents of whatever book my work might adorn. Julia Ridley Smith's novel might be the most perfect match ever. I'm thoroughly enjoying this vivid portrait of her late parents told through their objects. Having owned an antique shop in Greensboro, there are many to describe. I'm absolutely in love with this book, it is filled with wit and wisdom about life, death, and material possessions. What is not to love about that?! What a cool honor to be the visual representation for this story.
Available November 1 2021