ELIZABETH NEWMAN

Elizabeth Newman (b.1952 Grand Haven, Michigan) earned her MFA in 1984 from The School of the Art Institute, Chicago, IL

Newman’s work has been the subject of solo and group exhibitions at Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; Spoleto Festival USA, Charleston, South Carolina; P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, N.Y.; The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.; High Museum, Atlanta, GA; Renaissance Society, Chicago, IL; Fundacio “la Caix”, Barcelona, Spain; Fundacao Cultural de Curitiba, Curitiba, Brazil; Wave Hill, Bronx, NY; Kohler Art Center, Sheboygan, WI; Galerie Lelong, New York, NY

Newman is a sculptor. Having grown up in the midwest, along the shoreline and woods of Lake Michigan, the natural world has always been her muse, the subject of her artistic investigation. She is an obsessed collector of objects from her personal environment as well her own family’s generational belongings and history.

As a sculptor, she has been particularly attracted to the immediacy of drawing and the process of making mono prints, for it is difficult to find the same spontaneity and sense of play in the making of sculpture.

Working with Marina Ancona at 10 Grand Press: “I draw directly into the inked plates with toothpicks, hair combs, or sticks-incising scritch-scratch lines, sometimes with a free hand, often tracing shapes from the underside of objects I have brought in from my studio. Each print ends up with a skin of multiple layers of line and color on Chine Colle’ rice paper=creating a bed of energetic lines of geometry and alignment. Whirling circles, ovals, spirals, eggs, balls, pods, dots, and seed forms-reference plant life and a mapping of the female body. The final result is both manic and contemplative. The printing process is a way for me to return to the simple act of leaping, not getting too attached to the outcome. I follow my nose, and find a new language interwoven with the sculpture.