As an artist, Elizabeth Turk is interested in how artists transition between solitary studio work and platforms for public participation and experiences. An artist’s studio is intimate and safe, a space for creating out of vulnerability and passion. Social sculpture, on the other hand, provides the opportunity to ignite imagination together, in community. Communities create memories spontaneously, in recognition that personal perspectives exist in tandem with others.

Join us for a talk with Elizabeth Turk ahead of the launch of the flash art event Invisible Skies San José on Saturday, January 31, where the community are invited to transform City Hall into an illuminating celestial body.

About Elizabeth Turk

A native Californian, Elizabeth Turk is an artist, known for marble sculpture and through ET Projects, immersive art events. Currently, she splits time between a studio in Santa Ana, CA and NYC. She is a MacArthur Fellow, an Annalee & Barnett Newman Foundation recipient and a Smithsonian Artist Fellow among other awards. Turk received her MFA from Maryland Institute College of Art, Rinehart School of Sculpture in 1994, her BA from Scripps College, Claremont, CA in 1983. She has been represented by Hirschl & Adler, Modern in NYC since 2000.

Turk’s practice, a more traditional object-making art work, is her meditation. Her marble sculptures search the boundaries of paradox: the contemporary in the traditional, the lightness in weight, the emptiness in mass, the fluidity of the solid, extended time in a moment. Her work defies gravity and make possible that which seems impossible. Inspired by the natural world, she references its myriad of elegant organic structures.

In 2018 she launched ET Projects (a CA non-profit) to develop participatory art experiences. These projects are drawn from the idea of “activating” the stillness of a zen rock garden. Collaborating with communities, she creates a platform for publicly engaged creativity. This is realized by volunteers carrying umbrellas (colorful pixels) and filming with drones to create larger than life configurations. Her goal is to open gateways for creative experiences so that groups may see themselves from a multitude of perspectives and ultimately when projecting these videos publicly, shift shared airspace to venues reflecting people not product.