Liz Collins surrounds the viewer in vibrating color fields to explore the boundaries between painting, fiber arts and installation. The cacophonic play of optics, texture, color and scale, recreates her wavering experience of the world as a place of stupendous wonder and cosmic energy.
Collins’ solo exhibitions have been presented in New York City at Museum of Arts and Design, LMAK, Heller, and BGSQD, and at NADA, Collective, and Spring Break art fairs; and at the Tang Museum (Saratoga Springs, NY), AMP (Provincetown, MA), Knoxville Museum of Art (TN), Gallery DLUL (Ljubljana), and Rossana Orlandi (Milan); and has been included in group exhibitions in New York City at Leslie Lohman Museum, Museum of FIT, New Museum, MoMA, the Drawing Center, BRIC, Smackmellon, Asya Geisberg, Sargent’s Daughters, R & Company; as well as at September Gallery (Hudson, NY), NoLAB ( Istanbul), Kristin Hjellegjerde (Berlin), Luis de Jesus Los Angeles & LAMAG (LA), and Addison Gallery (Andover, MA).
Collins’ honors include a USA Fellowship, a MacColl Johnson Fellowship, Foundation for Contemporary Arts & ArtistRelief grants, Drawing Center Open Sessions and residencies at Siena Art Institute, MacDowell, Yaddo, Haystack, Museum of Arts and Design, Stoneleaf, and the Two Trees Cultural Subsidy Studio Program in Brooklyn.
Collins is a Queer Art Mentor, and serves on the Exhibitions Committee at Leslie Lohman Museum. In 2020, The Tang Museum released Liz Collins — Energy Field, her first major publication.
For more information, please see: LizCollins.com and on Instagram @lizzycollins7.
Liz Collins, Frozen, 2020. Linen, silk, steel. Photo: Joe Kramm.
First, and most importantly, how are you doing? How are you navigating the highs and lows?
I am good these days. I am currently at a residency upstate (Stoneleaf Retreat) where I am starting an outdoor installation project, so I have an inspiring new project in front of me. It’s the first time I’ve done an outdoor textile sculpture that is designed to last, withstanding weather and seasons. It’s stretching me in new ways.
I’ve been doing well in general, managing to make things, going to work on the regular - I have a wonderful big studio in Dumbo, which I moved into right before the pandemic started - seeing friends, family, and leaving town here and there to be in nature. I planted tulips and daffodils for the first time in my front yard and they have all come up - what a tremendous pleasure that has been to witness!
The one big personal challenge I have endured for the past year has been the remote school thing, and pandemic parenting my 11 year old in general...really hard…it makes me grateful for everything else in huge ways. We are making it through.
Liz Collins, Rapture, 2021. Linen, silk, wood. Photo: James Marcus Wade.
Liz Collins, Rapture (detail), 2021. Linen, silk, wood. Photo: James Marcus Wade.
It's my experience that most artists engage with some level of self-isolation in their day to day art practice. Has this been your experience? And if so, have you found these innate rhythms to be helpful during this larger, world-wide experience of isolation?
Yes - I love to self-isolate. But a balance of alone time and human engagement works best for me. I love being with people and part of my work involves lots of collaboration and working with others, but a lot of the deeper creative work I do needs solitude. I have found myself strangely longing for the time last year when things were really slow and quiet, so I could maintain some of that pace and mood. But those days of quiet came at such a cost to the world, so it’s complicated.
In many ways, things have gone back to normal in my work life, and I am among many who are struggling to get back into that intense and demanding way of life we had before the pandemic. I have a new consciousness about some of the ways I was working, and what I want to do differently, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that I am doing anything to change my default habit of taking on too many projects and multitasking my head off. The needlepoint work I do is often my solo work… But I can also do that work while I am sitting around a fire pit outside with friends - which is one of my favorite outdoor activities these days.
Liz Collins, Tutti Frutti, 2020. Acrylic, cotton, rayon, silk, wool. Photo: James Marcus Wade.
Liz Collins, Covid Needlepoints, 2020. Acrylic, cotton, rayon, silk, wool. Photo courtesy of the artist.
Liz Collins, Quilt, 2021. Acrylic, cotton, silk, wool. Photo: James Marcus Wade.
It would be great if you could briefly talk us through your practice. Understanding it is integral to appreciating the multivalence of your work.
I am an artist who uses textile and fiber in conjunction with hard materials (metal and wood) and other media (video, furniture) to build artworks that range from small needlepoints, to multi-room immersive installations that are containers for my multi-faceted artworks, and function as social spaces. Collaboration, travel, and industrial production - one or all - are usually part of what I do to actualize the work: from working with industrial textile mills to fabricate my pieces, to using the act of curation as a method of space transformation and community engagement. Dynamic pattern, vivid color, and sensual materials are the primary ingredients with which I channel my very life force through my hands into this ongoing and ever evolving vision. Drawing and painting are as generative and essential to my creative work as hands-on material transformation with yarn and fabric are. My ideas are informed by historical art and design movements such as Op and Pop Art, Arte Povera, Surrealism, and Memphis Design, as well as nature and spirit, and infused with my own queer and feminist sensibilities.
Liz Collins, Stretched Markers, 2020. Silk, safety pins, monofilament. Photo by Frank Graham.
Has any of your imagery shifted in a reflection to what's currently happening? And why, or why not?
The colors that show up in my works are usually reflective of my current state, and what’s going on around me - unless I am working on something that is a response to a specific prompt or subject matter. Last year, in the spring, my color palette got more complicated, and some new color combinations showed up in my needlepoints as a result of global and domestic realities: viruses, racial conflict, human and environmental demise, and suffering.
I have been surrounding myself with yellow in an unconscious way - in my room at home I have put up art that has lots of yellow - I didn’t see it at first and then one day it hit me. I generally use yellow a lot, and know that it is a way that I manifest both anxiety and exuberance, energy and aggression. I also made a piece that is about fire, since that was such a big part of last year.
Liz Collins, Fire, 2021. Linen, silk, steel. Photo: James Marcus Wade.
Liz Collins, Fire (detail), 2021. Linen, silk, steel. Photo: James Marcus Wade.
What is bringing you solace, or even joy, in this moment?
Nature brings me great joy, and solace, and so much more. I have always said that the way I thrive while living in NYC is that I leave a lot. I find it to be essential, in order to remain sane, and offset the intensity of urban life. What I do in that leaving is submerge myself in vast expanses of landscape that bowl me over and nourish me deeply. It’s connected, in part, to the solitude that is an essential component of what I need in order to thrive. This is such a banal sentiment, in a way….many people share these realities!
Being with friends is super joyful, as are listening to books and music, seeing art, talking about art, and MAKING ART (alone and with others).
Liz Collins, Shapeshifter 2, 2020. Acrylic paint, acrylic textile, flashe, rayon, wood. Photo: James Marcus Wade.
What research or writing are you doing that you find compelling?
I am learning more about witchcraft - something I have always been drawn to. Ritual and spiritual pursuits are key right now. Art making is, and always has been, an integral part of that for me, but I am exploring ways to make more direct connections, learn more, and connect with like-minded others.
Liz Collins, Secret Stairs, 2020. Acrylic, cotton, wool. Photo: James Marcus Wade.
Liz Collins, January 21, 2021. Acrylic, cotton, silk, wool. Photo: James Marcus Wade.
Liz Collins, Puzzle, 2021. Cotton, rayon, wool. Photo: James Marcus Wade.
Are you reading anything?
I am finally catching up to so many of my peers and getting deeply into Octavia Butler’s work.
I have become a fan of listening to books because I love to read but it makes me sleepy these days. So, I’m also doing Lynne Tillman’s new book, and have been taking in friends’ new books, like Tanya Selvaratnam’s Assume Nothing, and Benjamin Lorr’s The Secret Life of Groceries.
Liz Collins, Epaulet, 2021. Acrylic textile, wood. Photo:James Marcus Wade.
Where are you physically?
In a barn studio at Stoneleaf, which is in a quasi-rural area south of Kingston, NY.
Liz Collins, Dynamic Expansion, 2020. Installation at Ligne Roset, NYC. Photo by Federica Carlet.
Installation features textiles designed by Liz Collins for Pollack on walls and upholstered on Ligne Roset furniture with paintings by Liz Collins that use the Pollack fabric.
Liz Collins portrait in Dynamic Expansion installation at Ligne Roset, NYC, 2020. Photo by Federica Carlet.
Do you have any projects or exhibitions on view currently, or upcoming?
Current:
Goodnight House, Fort Makers, through May 27, 2021
OBJECTS: USA 2020, R & Company, through July 2021
Upcoming:
Inside~Out, Saint Marks Place, Brooklyn, May 13 - June 18, 2021
Omniscient: Queer Documentation in an Image Culture, Leslie Lohman Museum, June 18, 2021 - January 2, 2022
Counterbalance, Chautauqua Visual Arts, June 27 - July 25, 2021
Farther out:
Two-person exhibit with Gabrielle Shelton, Candice Madey Gallery, NYC, December 21, 2021 - January 22, 2022
Contemporary Forward @ Touchstones Rochedale, Rochedale, England, June - September 2022
Goodnight House installation at Fort Makers, March 2021. Photo: Joe Kramm.
Features commissioned artworks by 13 artists, including Liz Collins who constructed the bed, rug, and fireplace.
Liz Collins, Goodnight Hearth, 2021. Acrylic paint, paper mache, rayon, wood, wool. Photo: Joe Kramm.
Liz Collins, Goodnight Hearth (detail), 2021. Acrylic paint, paper mache, rayon, wood, wool. Photo: Joe Kramm.
Goodnight House installation at Fort Makers, March 2021. Photo: Joe Kramm.
Features commissioned artworks by 13 artists, including Liz Collins who constructed the bed, rug, and fireplace.
Liz Collins, Primary Rings, 2021. Acrylic textile. Photo: Joe Kramm.
Goodnight House installation at Fort Makers, March 2021. Photo: Joe Kramm.
Features commissioned artworks by 13 artists, including Liz Collins who constructed the bed, rug, and fireplace.
Liz Collins, Goodnight Bed (front), 2021. Acrylic textile, cotton, mohair, nails, polyester, wood, wool. Photo: Joe Kramm.
Liz Collins, Goodnight Bed (back), 2021. Acrylic textile, cotton, mohair, nails, polyester, wood, wool. Photo: Joe Kramm.
Liz Collins, Goodnight Bed (detail), 2021. Acrylic textile, cotton, mohair, nails, polyester, wood, wool. Photo: Joe Kramm.