Liz Craft (b. 1970, Los Angeles, CA USA)

A Los Angeles-based sculptor whose works often comprise cast bronze, polyurethane and fiberglass, meticulously transubstantiated to create fantasies and hallucinations of everyday objects, Liz Craft plays the role of visionary nest-builder in her ongoing Candy Colored Clown Series. Beginning with a mesh surface akin to the screened windows of the suburbs, Craft transmutes flotsam from her studio’s Venice Beach environs (Latin American soccer scarves, keepsake urchin exoskeletons, collectible glassware) into unique painterly pigments. By means of a three step process of reclamation to abstraction to figuration, the resulting objects—churlish, and sometimes cloying, clown faces—speak articulately of post-minimalist abstraction. 

Craft received her BFA from Otis Parsons in 1994 and MFA from UCLA in 1997. Select galleries and institutions that have exhibited her work include Brand New Gallery, Milan (2011), Patrick Painter Inc., Santa Monica (2010, 2008),  Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York (2010, 2007, 2004, 2003), Alison Jacques Gallery, London (2009, 2007, 2006), Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2009, 2007), Musee des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne (2008), White Cube, London (2008), Hayward Gallery (2007), Gering & Lopez Gallery, New York (2007), Halle für Kunst, Lunëberg (2006), Peres Projects, Los Angeles (2005), 2004 Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2004), Regen Projects, Los Angeles (2004), Migros Museum fur Gegenwartskunst, Zurich (2004), Friedrich Petzel Gallery, New York (2003), Sadie Coles HQ, London (2002), Public Art Fund, New York (2002), The London Institute Gallery, London (2002) and The Barbican Centre, London (2001).

Residencies and awards include the Alfred van Bohlen Award (2006), Blekede Residency (Lunenburg Landkriest) (2006), Linz Centum Fur Gugenwarts Kunst Residency (2000) and Tiffany Award (1999). She currently lives and works in Los Angeles.

Image: Liz Craft, Candy Colored Clown (Soccer Scarf Beard), 2010, metal, bronze, yarn 59 x 48 x 11.5 in (149.9 x 121.9 x 29.2 cm). In cooperation with Patrick Painter Inc.

(c) Liz Craft