A native Californian, Elizabeth Turk is an artist, known for marble sculpture and thru 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.
In 2018 she launched ET Projects (a CA non-profit) to develop participatory art experiences outside existing artworld boundaries. 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 video configurations. Her goal is to open gateways for creative experiences so that groups may see themselves from a multitude of perspectives. And, ultimately, when these videos are projected publicly, shift shared airspace to a collective reimagining of our civic landscape.
The idea of playing or freely gathering during a pandemic was impossible to conceive in 2020. Look Up dared to bring communities together safely to give them a new way of looking at themselves. And, as a result, they created a new lens through which the world saw them.
Ridgeline Project, hosted in collaboration with the Oak Spring Garden Foundation and Piedmont Environmental Council, invited community members to learn about local environmental challenges and to unite in a unique art-centric experience. With participants carrying illuminated umbrellas showcasing endangered flora, images inspired by books & etchings housed at the Oak Spring Garden Library, the gathering becomes a dance of light. From afar, participants transform into nature itself; a field of reseeded flowers blooming, backlit insects pollinating or constellations of stars twinkling against the backdrop of the Blue Ridge Mountains. All occurred in the face of today's extreme weather patterns: this time, Hurricane Ian.
Shoreline Project offers communities a platform to actively participate in the environment around them. This collective action encourages a shift in perspective from the belief that natural boundaries exist as boundaries rather than shared resources. This work was founded on the belief that art brings people together, in an inclusive way, and celebrates our intrinsic human connection to the natural world. Shoreline Project brings communities together as the first step in imagining solutions to these existential issues.
ARE WE CREATING A SILENCE? The thought of extinction can be overwhelming. Our everyday conversations aren't typically strong enough to support the weight of extinction's complexity. Tipping Point helps to introduce the concept and make the threat of climate change more tangible so we can take collective action. Through a series of events, experienced together; sculpture, dance, we turned a formal audience into active participants. By interacting physically with this art experience, we can shift our perspective around the scary subject of environmental change and fight the silence that surrounds it.