ABOUT
Born in 1967 in Eugene, Oregon, I grew up in a centenarian farmhouse just steps from the Maude Kerns Art Center, where I took my first classes and made my very first art sale. My earliest days were spent immersed in creative environments—from an obsession with collage to enticing my friends and classmates into joining me in performances or projects. On the walls of my house were the landscapes of Henri Rousseau, the graphics of Sister Corita Kent, and I spent hours studying the giant tome of Norman Rockwell when visiting my grandparents. That early momentum evolved into a life as a professional artist.
Growing up in the Pacific Northwest, the natural world has always amazed and inspired me. Many of my happiest youth memories were spent outdoors, hiking the Pacific Crest Trail with an annual posse of 18 people, making rock art at the family cabin in the high Sierras, or building terrariums in my backyard. I wanted to be in the Guinness World Records for collecting the most worms but was thwarted by storage limitations.
I moved to Portland, Oregon, in my 20s to attend the late, great Oregon College of Art and Craft. This is where I expanded my knowledge and skills with diverse, often reclaimed materials, building a career that spans sculpture, collage, installation, and public art.
When I am not in the studio, I am usually walking my neighborhood, cooking, tackling home and garden projects, watching Taskmaster, or solving the NYT Spelling Bee.
photo 2025 by Liz Crandall during an art residency at Pine Meadow Ranch.
ABOUT MY WORK
I am a triple threat artist-- conceptual, production, and public art. Here's how I roll:
STUDIO PRACTICE
My studio practice explores the ways that humans attempt to control nature, and in turn, nature finds a way to adapt or reassert itself--such as the grass that grows in the cracks of a sidewalk or mildew that forms on an uninsulated wall behind a couch. I express these struggles through craft-influenced sculpture and installations. My anthropomorphized organics live somewhere between humor and curiosity. A physical object is often the foundation of this work.
PUBLIC ART
As much as I love to do what I want, I equally adore working within a set of constraints. This is how I live in the world of public art, where function and pre-existing architecture give me hard and fast parameters to work within. I have grown my years of experience with installation art into an exploration of durable materials that don’t make aesthetic compromises and are scaled to their permanent environments. Thank you, hands-on craft training.
BUNNY WITH A
TOOLBELT
Another way I love to work with constraints is to design my own product line under the business name (and separate web entity) Bunny with a Toolbelt. My lifelong love of handmade wood animals come to life as wedding cake toppers, book characters, and playing cards.