Alyson Shotz facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Alyson Shotz
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| Born | 1964 Glendale, Arizona, United States
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| Nationality | American |
| 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 best 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, generally large-scale sculptures and installations that are intricate and handmade; more minimal, self-contained sculptures that sometimes involve fabrication and elements of chance; and abstract photographs and digital prints based on photographs. It belongs to the public collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, among others. She has exhibited at venues including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, 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 her childhood, she lived throughout the West and Midwest due to her father's career. She initially studied geology, but gradually 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.
Early in her career, Shotz worked 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 this blurring of figure and ground in later work, most similarly, in large-scale outdoor installations such as Mirror Fence (2003) and Scattering Screen (2016).
Recognition
Shotz's work belongs to the public collections of the Baltimore Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum of Art, 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 has commissioned to create several large-scale, site-specific works, including pieces for the High Museum of Art, Cleveland Clinic, MTA Arts & Design (New York), AT&T Stadium (Dallas), Stanford University Li Ka Shing Center for Learning and Knowledge, and U.S. General Services Administration. Shotz has been awarded fellowships from the Saint-Gaudens Memorial, New York Foundation for the Arts, MacDowell and Stanford University, and received awards from the Pollock-Krasner, Peter S. Reed, and Marie Walsh Sharpe foundations, Yale University and Art Matters, among others.
