liz harvey
Bimbo, 2024
Wire, sculpey, celluclay, acrylic, fabric
Pollenhead, 2024
Wire, sculpey, celluclay, acrylic, fabric
Untitled, 2024
Wire, sculpey, celluclay, acrylic, fabric
Fight and Flight: Crafting a Bay Area Life
Group Exhibition at the Museum of Craft and Design, San Francisco
April 15 - Sept. 10, 2023
Yellow Shift, 2021
Digital print on linen, zippers, thread
Photo credits: Top row: Left and center: Sibila Savage: Right: Henrik Kam. Bottom row: Henrik Kam;
Red Shift, 2021
Digital print on linen, zippers, thread
Blue Shift, 2021
Digital print on linen, zippers, thread
the lost ones are whispering, 2015-2023
Embroidery floss, linen, thread, notions (on dress form)
Sculpture/garment worn in performances of the lost ones performance project from 2015-2019. Rare and endangered plant embroideries were stitched by performance audiences who participated in sewing circles in public spaces during 26 performances; additional embroidered imagery by the artist. .
Headdress:
Head Trip, 2016-2023
Embroidery floss, embroidery hoops, hardware, organza
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the lost ones are whispering, 2015-2023
Head Trip, 2016-2023
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Head Trip, 2016-2023
EEmbroidery floss, embroidery hoops, hardware, organza
Liz Harvey
the lost ones: iterations and murmurs
Solo Exhibition at New Museum of Los Gatos
Dec. 4 , 2023 - April 14, 2024
Artworks, documentation, and artifacts from "the lost ones," a multi-year performance project.
Material Conditional, Round Weather Gallery, Oakland
Two-person exhibition with Leeza Doreian and Liz Harvey
Nov. 5 - Dec. 27, 2022
Review in 48hills: ‘Material Conditional’ refashions cultural refuse into objects of adoration', by Ava Morton
Left to right: Liz Harvey, golden dunes, 2016-2022; Liz Harvey, Yellow Shift, 2021; Leeza Doreian, Bright Light, Day Light, 2014; Liz Harvey, Red Shift
Liz Harvey, Yellow Shift, 2021
Liz Harvey, Red Shift, 2021
Left to right: Liz Harvey, Yes I said yes I will Yes, 2020, collage in artist frame; Collage #2, 2020, colllage in artist frame; Drizzle, 2003-2022, zippers; Leeza Doreian, Untitled (Orange Shirt, No Label) 2022
Liz Harvey, Collage #5, 2020; Map (Tilt), 2020; Collage #3, 2020; Yes I said yes I will Yes, 2020; Collage #2, 2020 (all collage in artist frames)
Liz Harvey, golden dunes, 2016-2023
Liz Harvey, Drizzle, 2004
Liz Harvey, Future Flag, 2022
Left to Right: Liz Harvey, Reef, photocollage, 2014; Ocean, photocollage, 2014
Left to right: Liz Harvey, Yellow Shift, 2021; Collage #5, 2020; Map (Tilt), 2020; Collage #3, 2020; Yes I said yes I will Yes, 2020; Collage #2, 2020 (all collage in artist frames)
Left to right: Liz Harvey,Collage #5, 2020; Map (Tilt), 2020; Collage #3, 2020; Yes I said yes I will Yes, 2020; Collage #2, 2020 (all collage in artist frames); Drizzle, 2004
Liz Harvey & Kim Ip, Queer Ecologies: Stitching to a New Sparkle, 2022
Documentation of performance in Oakland
Photo credit: Karen Goldman
Liz Harvey, Reef, photocollage, 2014
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Liz Harvey, Ocean, photocollage, 2014
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Liz Harvey, Microbes, photocollage, 2014
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Exhibition: Terrain Biennial, a public art project of Terrain Exhibitions
Shift
Installation at the home of Nancy Gordon, Union St, Alameda, CA
Sept. - Nov., 2021
Feature in Alameda Sun: Artist Liz Harvey's Works on Display
Red Shift
2021
Ellipses
Ellipses
Collages begun in April 2020 foreground the paper from my home and studio recycling bins with the text removed, and are framed in artist frames made from found wood. The resulting shapes engage with textile imagery, negative space and layering to create maps, or not-maps, to disorient and reorient the viewer and call for us to disorient and reorient our systems. They are ellipses of sorts, a way of pointing to what remains when words are excised from editorials, promotion, and consumer culture. These paper flyers, magazines, studio "trash", and food packaging offer color, meandering shapes, and the surprising flattened “skins” of boxes. Their layered fields of possibility aim to anchor the viewer in an experience of flux.
Shake Rattle and Roll
Monoprint on paper
2022
Skip
Monoprint on paper
2022
Living for the City
Monoprint on paper
2022
Untitled
Monoprint and collage on paper
2022
Monoprint and collage on paper
2023
Monoprint on paper
2023
Monoprint on paper
2023
Monoprint and collage on paper
2023
Monoprint and collage on paper
2023
Monoprint and collage on paper
2023
Monoprint and collage on paper
2023
Little Review
Little Review
Little Review is an homage to Margaret Anderson and Jane Heap, lesbian editors of an early 20th-century magazine, The Little Review, who were also a couple. Their story informs the installation in a number of ways.
The Little Review was an anarchic, feminist, avant-garde American magazine which ran from 1914-1929, known for publishing the work of modernist American, English and Irish writers. The installation is modeled after the color palette of Anderson and Heap’s bohemian domestic space, particularly their bed pillows for a sleeping arrangement in their bedroom, which was also their office. The piece also responds to Max Ernst’s graphic design of a cover of the magazine from 1923-24. My installation is fueled by how Anderson and Heap’s erotic desire and creative energy generated their impact on this singular magazine.
the lost ones video documentation
durational performances in San Francisco, Oakland, and the greater SF Bay Area, 2015-2017
the lost ones, 2015-2019
the lost ones, 2015-2019
the lost ones is a multi-year performance project begun in 2015 that features a range of performers rotating through an embroidered performance garment in order to highlight overlooked species, untold histories, and little-acknowledged art practices. The project uses embroidery and dance as vehicles for exploring the impact of climate change and human intervention with a focus on the exponential increase in the rate of plant extinctions in countries that were formerly colonized. Each performance responds to its site, while acting as a devotional ritual for critically endangered plants centered on an evolving embroidered dress that participants embroider during performances. Each performance is a new iteration on a theme, with new movement, and a focus on either one of two historical figures as well and/or a variety of plants from spots around the world marked by colonization.
The project responds to the histories of two 19th century British women, Marianne North, who was white, and Mary Seacole, who was black. Their stories of pursuing, preserving, and using plant knowledge come to us through their autobiographical writings, and for me, stand for the legions of stories of women whose lives and work as caretakers and craftspeople have gone unacknowledged, whose histories have been written over, deleted, and forgotten. Collaborations with choreographers Mary Armentrout, Cherie Hill and Megan Nicely have brought different movement inspirations to selected performances, including butoh, modern dance, African dance, repetition, walking, reclining, speaking, and vocalization.
the lost ones is for all the women who didn’t write themselves into history. It is for all the plants that are now extinct. It is for all the plants that are not known to humans. It is about the vastness, the aggregate, the many, the unknown, the living, the dead. Each stitch, each group of stitches, joins the thousands of stitches made by myself and in partnership with hundreds of others who have participated by adding stitches of their own.
The queer creature that takes up residence in the garment is a cross-species creature: part woman, part plant, part flower. They are here to grab your attention – to ask you to halt and consider. To disorient, and reorient you. The time is now.
Thank you to the performers, choreographers, and other collaborators I have partnered with: Mary Armentrout, Megan Nicely, and Cherie HIll for partnering on choreography as well as performing, science editor Lauren Muscatine for collaborating on conversations with stitchers about climate change, scientist Jennifery Robyn Berry for collaborating on choreography, plus performers Frances Rosario, Merlin Coleman, Alyssa Stone, Chris Evans, Lordy Rodriguez, Jennifer Robyn Berry, Alisha Maitri Miller, Megan Hetzel, and Lauren Godla. Each performer collaborated on choreography. Thank you to Merlin Coleman, Cherie Hill, and Alyssa Stone for collaborating on vocalizations which they performed. Thank you to Amy Brown for inhabiting the dress for a stitching circle and for adding her stitches. I also want to thank Annalee Levin for guiding me in my initial exploration of embroidery. Thanks go to Annalee Levin and Lucy Barter for mentoring stitchers during several performances, as well as stitching on the garment during performances. I am also grateful to Britex Fabrics, Artist and Craftsman Supply, and Needle in a Haystack for donated materials.
I have partnered with the following organizations for 26 performances over the past five years:
Yerba Buena Night, San Francisco
DeYoung Museum, San Francisco
ProArts Gallery, Oakland
Artemis Gallery, San Francisco
Filoli Estate and Gardens, Redwood City
ICB Artist Residency, Sausalito
Ploughshares Nursery, Alameda
San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles, San Jose
MilkBar, Cotati
Salesforce Park, Intersection for the Arts Artist Residency, San Francisco
Plan-d Gallery, Los Angeles
Kairos series
2019
Kairos series
2019
Kairos series
2019
Kairos series
2019
Kairos series
2019
Kairos series
2019
Kairos series
2019
Kairos series
2019
Kairos series
2019
Kairos series
2019
Kairos series
2019
Kairos, 2019
Kairos, 2019
The Kairos paintings revolve around the idea of simultaneous eras, as well as the notion of a propitious time for action. Kairos is a Greek rhetorical idea that describes the right time for something, as opposed to chronos, which describes chronological time. The paintings feature abstractions of images of critically endangered plants from former British colonies including India, Sri Lanka, Tenerife, and Brazil, all countries visited by Marianne North, a 19th century female botanical painter who used her inheritance to fuel her painting expeditions. Since the current rise in plant extinctions began in the 19th century, I find myself returning to North’s travels as a marker of a slide towards ecocide and the present, when climate change rhetoric points to time speeding up and running out.
Project Arp
Photo collages made from chance processes applied to photographs I took of my Oakland garden, interrogating the use of chance and abstraction as gateways to a transformed world. The imagery calls up imagined narratives that reverse the forces causing climate change.
Project Arp, 2014-15 Photocollage on paper
Tree of Life, Afghanistan, 2018
Watercolor on paper
5 x 5-3/5
Tree of Life, Syria, 2018
Watercolor on paper
5 x 5-1/2 in.
Watercolor on paper
5 x 5-1/2 in.
Tree of Life, Slovakia, 2018
Watercolor on paper
5 x 5-3/5 in.
Watercolor on paper
5 x 5-3/5 in.
Tree of Life, Tunisia, 2018
Watercolor on paper
5 x 5-4/5 in.
Watercolor on paper
5 x 5-4/5 in.
Tree of Life, Morocco, 2018
Watercolor on paper
5 x 5-1/2 in.
Watercolor on paper
5 x 5-1/2 in.
disappearances draws on embroidered patterns invoking the tree of life from various embroidery traditions around the world. In residence at the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles, I established a routine that included watercolor paintings to start each day, as a way to study and honor the use of embroidery to invoke power and life.
disappearances
Zippers, fabric, wood, metal, glue, zipper pulls
Bay Area Discovery Museum, Sausalito, CA
Bay Area Discovery Museum Artist Residency, Winter 2015-16
Fabric, cord, plastic, fiberglass, and metal
2016
Downtown Bellevue, WA
Climber features embroidered images of endangered plants from the Pacific Northwest
Line Chance Dance, 2013 participatory performance
led by Liz Harvey
Performance
Collaboration with choreographer Mary Armentrout
International Home Performance Festival, Oakland, CA
Performers: Liz Harvey and Mary Armentrout
Performance installation
Collaboration with dancer Jose Navarrete
Performers: Jose Navarrete and Lordy Rodriguez
Montalvo Center for the Arts, Saratoga, CA
From Zipped Series
Spread, 2004
shy lemons greens cool chocolates
Greenleaf Gallery, Whittier College
Loll, 2002
Panabnorama
Ed Giardina Gallery, Santa Ana, CA
Installation shot
Panabnorama, 2000
Performance Installation
Crazy Space, Santa Monica, CA
Performer: Liz Harvey
Unquiet Grave, 2000
Performance
Los Angeles River Festival
July 4, 1997
Performers: Liz Harvey, members of the Los Angeles artist community, and residents of east Los Angeles
Thirsty?, 1997
Outerwear
Plastica, Los Angeles
Gear, 1997
Installation
Archive