Alyson Shotz facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Alyson Shotz
Born	1964 Glendale, Arizona, United States
Education	University of Washington, Rhode Island School of Design
Known for	Sculpture, installation art, photography, video
Awards	Stanford University Research Fellow, Pollock-Krasner Foundation, New York Foundation for the Arts

Alyson Shotz (born 1964) is an American sculptor based in Brooklyn, New York. She is known for experiential, large-scale abstract sculptures and installations inspired by nature and scientific concepts, which manipulate light, shadow, space and gravity in order to investigate and complicate perception. Writers suggest her work challenges tenets of monumental, minimalist sculpture—traditionally welded, solid, heavy and static—through its accumulation of common materials in constructions that are often flexible, translucent, reflective, seemingly weightless, and responsive to changing conditions and basic forces. Sculpture critic Lilly Wei wrote, "In Shotz’s realizations, the definition of sculpture becomes increasingly expansive—each project, often in series, testing another proposition, another possibility, another permutation, while ignoring conventional boundaries."

Shotz’s artwork has been loosely grouped into three types: expansive, intricate large sculptures and installations that are handmade; minimal, self-contained sculptures that sometimes involve fabrication and elements of chance; and abstract photographs and digital prints based on photographs. Her work belongs to the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao and Storm King Art Center, among others. She has exhibited at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Hirshhorn Museum, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), Guggenheim Bilbao, Wexner Center for the Arts and Indianapolis Museum of Art.

Education and early and career

Shotz was born in Glendale, Arizona in 1964, the daughter of an Air Force pilot and a teacher. In childhood, she lived throughout the West and Midwest due to her father's career. She initially studied geology, but turned to art; science has remained a strong influence on her work. After enrolling at Rhode Island School of Design, she graduated with a BFA in 1987 and earned an MFA from the University of Washington in 1991. In the early 1990s, she moved to New York City.

Shotz began as a painter, producing colorful images of organic forms, while sometimes integrating photography, collage and video into her practice. A foundational work was Reflective Mimicry (1996), which included photographs and a video of a woman walking in the woods, clad in a full-body suit armored in small mirrors; its play of reflected foliage against actual foliage had the effect of de-materializing the figure. She would continue to explore the blurring of figure and ground, most similarly, in large-scale outdoor installations such as Mirror Fence (2003) and Scattering Screen (2016).

Public commissions

Shotz has been commissioned to create large-scale, site-specific works for the Stanford University Li Ka Shing Center for Learning and Knowledge, NYU Langone Health, MTA Arts & Design (New York), High Museum of Art, Cleveland Clinic and AT&T Stadium (Dallas). In 2022, she installed the permanent, twisting painted-steel sculpture Entanglement above the atrium of the Skidmore College Center for Integrated Sciences. Her glass mosaic work for the domed ceiling of the Fred D. Thompson Federal Courthouse in Nashville, The Robes of Justitia, was commissioned by the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) and won the organization's 2022 Honor Award in Art. In 2023, Shotz's outdoor, site-responsive sculpture, Temporal Shift, was acquired by the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum; originally commissioned by the Grace Farms Foundation, the work's elliptical, stainless-steel form interacts with natural light and references the Earth’s orbital pathway around the Sun.

Collections and recognition

Shotz's work belongs to the public collections of the Academy Art Museum, Baltimore Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum of Art, deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Guggenheim Bilbao, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Indianapolis Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Museum of Modern Art, National Gallery of Art, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, The Phillips Collection, Rose Art Museum, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Jose Museum of Art, Storm King Art Center and Whitney Museum, among others.

She has been awarded fellowships from the Saint-Gaudens Memorial (2007), New York Foundation for the Arts (2004), MacDowell (2021) and Stanford University (2014), and received awards from Art Matters (1996), Yale University (2005), the U.S. GSA (Honor Award in Art, 2022), and the Pollock-Krasner (1999), Marie Walsh Sharpe (2004) and Peter S. Reed (2021) foundations, among others.