Liz Larner facts for kids

Liz Larner (born in 1960) is an American artist. She creates amazing sculptures and art installations. She lives and works in Los Angeles, California.

Early Life and Art School

Liz Larner was born in Sacramento, California, in 1960. She went to the California Institute of Arts in Valencia, California. In 1985, she earned her art degree there. She even studied with a famous artist named John Baldessari.

What Kind of Art Does Liz Larner Make?

Liz Larner's art is often compared to sculptures from the late 1960s and early 1970s. Artists like Eva Hesse and Jackie Winsor made similar kinds of works.

Exploring Different Materials

In the late 1990s, Larner started using ceramic materials in her art. She likes to use many different things in her sculptures. These include fiberglass, crystals, paper, clay, aluminum, steel, rubber, epoxy, mirrors, and cloth. She even used bacteria in some of her early pieces!

Her sculptures are often about the size of a person. They show her unique ideas and personal stories. She doesn't just make simple, plain shapes.

Art About Change and Space

In her early art, Larner looked at how things change and break down. She even grew things in petri dishes and took photos of them.

Later, her sculptures and installations explored how an object fills a space. They also showed how art can change the way you see that space. For example, her piece Damage Control (1987) was a two-foot block of unusual substances. Another work, Used to Do the Job (1987), had two rough blocks stacked up. One was made of lead, and the top one was mostly wax. These pieces made people think about hidden things and transformation.

Bringing Illusions to Life

In 1991, Larner had an idea for a sculpture based on something called chromostereopsis. This is a cool visual trick where colors seem to vibrate or create a feeling of depth. It often happens with colors like red and green.

Larner wanted to bring this flat, 2D illusion into a real, 3D space. Her sculpture, Corridor Red/Green, tried to do just that. She used different materials and tensions to make the colors seem to move. She wondered if the same exciting vibration could happen in a real sculpture.

Sculptures That Seem to Move

Another famous piece is 2001. It's a big, green and purple shape, 12 feet wide. Larner mixed a cube and a sphere together in this piece. This makes the object look like it's always moving. Its shiny surface looks a lot like the paint on cars.

In 2013, the Nasher Sculpture Center asked Larner to create a new sculpture. It was for The University of Texas at Dallas. Larner designed a sculpture called X. It's made of shiny stainless steel that looks like a mirror. It was placed in the courtyard of a new building there.

Where Liz Larner's Art Has Been Shown

Liz Larner's art has been shown in many places. Her work has been displayed in museums across Europe and the United States.

Major Art Shows

Some big shows of her art include:

• Kunsthaus Graz, Austria (2006)
• Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Los Angeles (2001)
• Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna (1998)
• Kunsthalle Basel, Basel (1997)

Her art was also part of the 2006 Whitney Biennial. It was also in a show called "Helter Skelter: L.A. Art in the 1990s" in 1992.

In 2006, her sculpture 2001 was put on display in Doris C. Freedman Plaza. This plaza is near the entrance to Central Park in New York City.

Other Exhibitions

In 1989, Liz Larner was one of the artists who chose not to show their work at the Corcoran Gallery of Art. This was because the museum had changed its plans for a show by photographer Robert Mapplethorpe.

In 2013, Liz Larner made two versions of her "X" sculpture. They were for the Edith O'Donnell Arts and Technology Building in Texas.

The Aspen Art Museum (AAM) had a special show of Larner's ceramic art in 2016. It showed her work from 2011 onwards.

In May 2019, Regen Projects hosted her solo show called "As Below, So Above."

Liz Larner is represented by Regen Projects in Los Angeles. She is also represented by the Tanya Bonakdar Gallery in New York City.

Where You Can Find Her Art

Liz Larner's art is part of many important museum collections. Some of these include:

• Los Angeles County Museum of Art
• San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
• Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
• Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego
• Hammer Museum, Los Angeles
• Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
• Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
• Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
• Smithsonian Museum, Washington, DC

She also has art in the Deste Foundation in Athens, Greece.

Awards and Honors

Liz Larner has received several awards for her art:

• In 1999, she won a Guggenheim Fellowship.
• In 2000, she received the Anonymous Was a Woman award.
• In 2002, she received the Lucelia Artist Award from the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
• In 2005, she received the Pacific Design Center Stars of Design award.
• In 2014, she received a grant from the Nancy Graves Foundation.