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Artist Statement
I like to build things without a plan.
This exhibit, Past Forward, comes at a time of experimentation and shifts that have been simmering for years: inside the studio and out, in my thinking and my actions.
After the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan, I began making thread-and-vellum drawings of the destruction, using media photos. The hundreds of shipping containers strewn across the Honshu landscape struck a deep chord. So did the disembodied roofs of Japanese homes and tossed airplanes. I made ten drawings documenting the chaos by anchoring thread to vellum with knots.
Marine accidents involving ocean-going cargo ships became my subject. Untitled #1 (MOL Comfort, 6.27.13, 11.46 am) and Untitled #2 (MOL Comfort, 6.27.13, 11.45 am) capture a sinking ship at two particular moments in its journey down.
In the All Fall Down series, shipping containers are toppling, clinging, falling in, floating away, separating from the sinking ship and from each other.
Here is my statement for the series from 2021:
The drawings in this series are from photos of marine accidents, and made of thread, knots, and vellum. All were completed in 2019 but I am just writing this statement.
At sea, stacks of containers topple from a loaded cargo ship. The containers separate, tear at each other, drop, get wedged in, peel open, sink, float away. The drawings capture a split-second effect of wind, waves, momentum, gravity, and human fallibility.
I made this series before the pandemic, when I wasn’t as angry and afraid as I am now. “Human fallibility” would not have appeared in a statement about this work back then, when the poetry of the drawing was all I had to think about. This paragraph wouldn’t have occurred to me:
A captain was drunk, or asleep, or changed course. An undeclared container of fireworks exploded. Power failed. Steering was lost. A crack opened in the hull. A fire began in the hold. The hull hogged. The anchor dragged. The ship runs up a reef, breaks up, burns, sinks, gets towed, or awaits salvage. People abandon ship safely, heal from their injuries, or die.
Covid changed everything, of course.
I stared out the window and made drawings from my photos of the screen. I began miles-long masked walks in my Brooklyn neighborhood, lightly organized around family landmarks and visual themes, like unpeopled front porches. Both parents did chunks of growing up around this neighborhood, but I only learned that after I moved here in 2008. I’d unwittingly planted myself at the beginning.
The photos evolved from themed “essays” to abstractions — images from the minutae of our everyday world: cracks in the sidewalk, snowy rooftops. They also became formal, documenting meeting places of shapes, lines, textures, edges, colors, and site. For me, the abstractions exceeded the specificity of the essays by tapping into ideas about relationships, dominance, co-existence, decay.
I’ve been looking for ways to materialize and dimensionalize my photos. I’m trying to expand (literally: build onto) what they represent for me.
Bio
Visual artist Liz Sweibel works in sculpture, drawing, and photography. Her studio practice revolves around materiality and process, combined with conceptual and formal rigor. Sweibel makes, solves, and re-solves small, complex, material problems using what is at hand, which often includes bits of earlier work. She is improvisational, low tech, impatient, hands-on, exacting, and sometimes clumsy. Covid has had a profound impact on all the whys, hows, wheres, and whens she works and exhibits.
Sweibel has participated in solo, two-person, and group exhibits since 1998, such as Small Wonders and Parallel Pursuits at Kathryn Markel Fine Art (NYC), Abductions and Reconstructions at Real Art Ways (Hartford), and Unlikely Materials and the Language of Art at Krasdale Galleries (NY). Sweibel is also a full-time college lecturer, and the impact on her living and thinking are threaded into what she does and makes in the studio.
Sweibel has given artist talks at the South Carolina Governors School of the Arts (Greenville), NURTUREart (Brooklyn), LIM College (NYC), Rhodes College (Memphis), Montserrat College of Art (Beverly, MA), and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts (Boston). She has also participated in student critiques, which, as an educator, are very meaningful for her. She has received press in a range of mass market periodicals, as well as niche internet publications.
During and ever since Covid, Sweibel has been posting Brooklyn street photos on her Instagram (@lizsweibel). She walks to explore Brooklyn as a site of family history; her research keeps delivering surprises that have opened new lines of inquiry and emotion in the studio. The artist’s website is http://www.lizsweibel.com.
Sweibel received her BFA from Massachusetts College of Art and her MFA from Maine College of Art. She also holds a BA in English and an MA in Counseling. She lives and works in Brooklyn and teaches in Manhattan.
Liz Sweibel
Brooklyn, NY
Education
MA in Counseling, Manhattan College
MFA in Studio Arts, Maine College of Art
BFA in Painting, Massachusetts College of Art BA in English, University of Florida
Exhibition Record
2024 Solo exhibition. Past Forward. Five Points Gallery, Torrington, CT (7/5 – 8/10) 2023 Among Friends 4. Metaphor Projects, Brooklyn, NY
Small Works. Five Points Gallery, Torrington, CT
2022 Among Friends 3. New York Artists Equity Gallery, New York, NY 2021 Parallel Pursuits. Kathryn Markel Fine Art, New York, NY (curated by
Tamar Zinn)
2020 Small Wonders. Kathryn Markel Fine Art, New York, NY
Art on Paper 2020 Fair. Pier 36, New York, NY (with Kathryn Markel Fine Art) 2019 Unlikely Materials and the Language of Art. Krasdale Galleries. Bronx
and White Plains, NY
Home as Shelter. Happylucky No 1. Brooklyn, NY
2018 Allow Me to Reintroduce Myself. Cigar Factory. Long Island City, NY Abductions and Reconstructions. Real Art Ways. Hartford, CT (curated by
David Borawski)
2017 Excessive Frugality. ODETTA Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
2016 Precarious Constructs. Venus Knitting Art Space. Brooklyn, NY
Lightly Structured. Sculpture Space NYC, Long Island City, NY (curated by Patricia Zarate)
2015 Kiosk. ODETTA Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
2014 The Girls Next Door. Ground Floor Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
It’s a Small World. R. Jampol Projects, New York, NY
2013 Solo exhibition. fragments of our own. NURTUREart, Brooklyn, NY (catalog)
How Simple Can You Get? Creative Arts Workshop, New Haven, CT (juried by Robert Storr)
2012 Two-person exhibition. Parts to the Whole. Medicine Factory, Memphis, TN 2011 Revealing the Ordinary. Gallery Korea, New York, NY (catalog)
2008 Many Kinds of Nothing. Montserrat College of Art Gallery, Beverly, MA (catalog)
2007 Neo-Abstraction. AG Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
2004 Solo exhibition. Re:Union. HallSpace, Boston, MA
Solo exhibition. Opening. Elizabeth A. Beland Gallery, Essex Art Center, Lawrence, MA
2003 150 x 150. The Gallery @ Green Street, Jamaica Plain, MA
Solo exhibition. Lines of Thought. MFA Thesis Exhibit. Maine College of Art,
Portland, ME
Remains: Four Artists Mine Memory and Meaning. Lamont Gallery, Phillips
Exeter Academy, Exeter, NH
Marks Made. Cushing-Martin Gallery, Stonehill College, Easton, MA
2002 Two-person exhibition. Lost & Found. The Mills Gallery, Boston, MA (catalog) South Enders. The Mills Gallery, Boston, MA (juried by Annette Lemieux)
2001 Salon. Montserrat College of Art Gallery, Beverly, MA
17th Annual Drawing Show. The Mills Gallery, Boston, MA (curated by Bill
Arning [catalog])
2000 150 x 150. The Gallery @ Green Street, Jamaica Plain, MA.
Collaborative installation. For the Time, Being. Fort Point Arts Community Gallery, Boston, MA (with Traci Wile and Asa Chibas)
1999 7th Invitational Exhibition. The John Slade Ely House, New Haven, CT New Art ‘99. MPG, Boston, MA. Carl Belz, Juror.
DD-MM-YY. Empty foundry, Hartford, CT (curated by David Borawski)
1998 Solo exhibition. Skin and Bones. Gallery 70, Worcester, MA
Gallery 70 II Boston Debut. Fort Point Arts Community Gallery, Boston, MA Small Work. The Gallery @ Green Street, Jamaica Plain, MA
Grants, an Award, and a Residency
2023 Best in Show. Small Works, Five Points Gallery, Torrington, CT 2007 Vermont Studio Center (partial fellowship)
2003 Albert Murray Educational Fund Grants (also in 2002 and 2001) 2002 Maine College of Art Grants (also in 2001)
2001 Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Grant, Finalist, Sculpture St. Botolph Club Foundation Grant-in-Aid
LizSweibel 2
Visiting Artist and Talks
2021 South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities, Greenville, SC 2013 NURTUREart Non-Profit, Brooklyn, NY
2012 LIM College, New York, NY
Rhodes College, Memphis, TN
2008 Montserrat College of Art, Beverly, MA
2001 School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Post-Baccalaureate Program,
Boston, MA
2000 Wentworth Institute of Technology, Boston, MA
“Other”
2018 Interview. Live Culture Episode 37: Structive (De, Con & In) (WPKN podcast) 2017 Cover photograph. Waxwing Literary Journal (spring edition)
2003 Performance. Sacred and Profane. Battery Steele, Peaks Island, Portland, ME 2000 Stage set. Certain Moments. Art with modern dance. Mobius, Boston, MA
(choreographed by Jody Weber)
1999 Stage set. Verge. Art with modern dance. Green Street Studios, Cambridge,
MA (choreographed by Jody Weber)
Selected Bibliography
2020 Artists on Coping: Liz Sweibel, Interview in Art Spiel
2013 Doherty, D. (2013, July 18). “How Simple Can You Get?” A remarkable show at Creative Arts Workshop. New Haven Register.
Galgiani, A., & Manousakis, D. (2013, September 5). Art is BACK! 10 Bushwick art shows to defeat “summer nihilism.” Bushwick Daily.
2012 Wei, L. (2012). Gallery Korea’s 2011 round-up. Gallery Korea 2011: Finalists from the Call for Artists 2011. New York: Korean Cultural Service.
2009 Raymond, D. (2008/2009, December/January). Spotlight review: Many Kinds of Nothing. Art New England.
2008 McQuaid, C. (2008, October 5). “Nothing” is happening: Minimalist works help provoke a meditative state. Boston Sunday Globe.
2004 McCoy, M.B. (2004, June/July). Liz Sweibel: Re:Union. Art New England, p. 30.
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2002 McQuaid, C. (2002, March 29). Using found objects, artists create works that grapple with loss. The Boston Globe, p. F18.
McQuaid, C. (2002, December 29). The best of 2002: City’s energetic galleries flourished despite economic slump. Boston Sunday Globe, p. N2.
Sherman, M. (2002, March 10). Discover new sculpture at “Lost & Found.” Boston Herald, p. 63.
2000 Taylor, C. (2000, June 10). Duo makes “Moments” count. Boston Herald, p. 22.
1999 Birke, J. (1999, October 31). Revamped Ely House hosts distinguished invitational. New Haven Register, p. D1.
