Today we visit our last studio for our Summer 2014 tour with sculptor, Suzanne Torres, at the Art Lofts Building, which houses graduate and professor studios at UW-Madison.
Suzanne Torres
Her work borrows elements from our physical and natural surroundings and reinterprets them through scale and abstraction. It brings to mind natural phenomenon, unearthed relics, built environments, and the act of transformation. She creates large-scale sculpture and installation that have an evocative presence – suspended from the ceiling, traversing wall and floor, or enveloping the viewer – they appear to exist in a realm of time somewhere between birth and collapse, both degrading and emerging before our eyes.
Constructed from common materials such as clay, rope, wood, cardboard, and cement, her work responds to natural and manmade landscapes, breeding both familiarity and instability. Often exceeding human scale, the work has a physical presence that translates as a spatial experience- it elicits an emotive response from the viewer and explores the body’s interaction with space.
Channeling opposing forces of structure and collapse, her work exists in a state of flux, conjuring notions of transformation and evolution. In utilizing unfired clay there exists a tension between solidity and fragility. The potential for breakdown and ultimate recycling of much of her work signifies its temporal existence.
About
Suzanne Torres (b.1982, New Jersey) received her BA in Art from Monmouth University in 2008 and was a Post-Baccalaureate student in sculpture at the San Francisco Art Institute. She participated in additional studies at the Studio Arts Center International in Florence, Italy and the Metáfora International Workshop in Barcelona, Spain as a yearlong resident. Most recently she participated in the Open Studio Residency at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts and received a full fellowship to the Vermont Studio Center for the summer of 2014. She has exhibited her work nationally and internationally. Torres is a third-year Ceramics graduate and MFA candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
All images copyright of the artist and used with their permission.
MIDWEST ARTIST STUDIOS ™ PROJECT 