100- Catalyst Presents: The Artist is Present -Elizabeth Turk

“The Artist is Present” is a special series which is being hosted under the Catalyst: A Creative Industries Podcast of the Center for Creative and Cultural Industries at Chapman University.  “The Artis is Present” was developed under the direction of the Phyllis and Ross Escalette Permanent Collection of Art’s Director, Fiona Shen, and Registrar, Jessica Bocinski, so that a wider audience would have the opportunity to hear directly from the artists in the Escalette Collection at the University. In this episode host Abigail Stephens  speaks with artist Elizabeth Turk. A native Californian, Elizabeth Turk is an artist, primarily known for marble sculpture. In 2010, she was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship and the Annalee & Barnett Newman Foundation award. Today, she splits time between Santa Ana, CA and NYC. Turk received her MFA from Maryland Institute College of Art, Rinehart School of Sculpture in 1994, her BA from Scripps College, Claremont, CA in 1983. Turk’s work searches the boundaries of paradox: the contemporary in the traditional, the lightness in weight, the emptiness in mass, the fluidity of the solid, extended time in a moment. Reducing hundreds of pounds of stone to essential matrices of 5-25 lbs., her intricately carved sculptures defy gravity and make possible that which seems impossible. Inspired by the natural world, she references its myriad of elegant organic structures, yet her work is not complete until abandoned to larger environments, humbling the intensity of her creative focus. Her studio is located in Santa Ana, CA.