Liz Collins is an artist and designer living in Brooklyn, NY. Employing a range of natural to synthetic materials, incorporating vivid colours, dynamic patterns, emphasizing textures and inventive structures, Collins enjoys pushing the limits and doing the unexpected across the spectrum of textile media. Her artworks surround the viewer in vibrating colour fields to explore the boundaries between painting, fiber arts and installation. The cacophonic play of optics, texture, colour and scale, recreates her wavering experience of the world as a place of stupendous wonder and cosmic energy.
Who are you?
An artist.
Where do you live?
Brooklyn, NY.
What do you do?
Make art, friends, projects, and travel.
Who & what inspires you?
I love life and people and culture and nature. Basically being alive inspires me and my relationships with friends and lovers are as inspiring as the work of so many creative people past and present. I am often inspired by film and music and design and think a lot about energy and emotions.
What doesn’t inspire you?
Stress, political corruption, extreme violence, bad smells.
What projects have you been recently working on?
Lots of textile works, a big installation at a Queer bookstore in NYC that has a portrait show with over 90 Queer artists. I just did an art fair in March with my gallery in NYC and people loved the work. I’m having a solo show in September there so starting to envision that.
What projects in your lifetime have the most significance in both of your work?
The installations I did at the New Museum last year and at the Tang Museum 2015-2017. They were both large scale projects - immersive environments that provided space for people to linger and relax while taking in lots of art.
Where is design & art heading?
New places always.
What’s wrong with design?
Nothing. I do think that the art world could do a better job of acknowledging the design world and the robust intersections there.
Who do you think are the most influential artists & designers in recent years?
Artists: Kerry James Marshall, Yayoi Kusama, Kara Walker, Eva Hesse and Louise Bourgeois are always influential. Designers: India Mahdavi, Rei Kawakubo, Patricia Urquiola, Etorre Sotsass, Nathalie Du Pasquier.
What artists and designers have inspired you in your lifetime?
Jean Paul Gaultier, Issey Miyake, Junichi Arai, Janine Antoni, Andrea Zittel, Agnes Martin, Bridget Riley, Aligheiro Boetti, Gunta Stozl, Sol LeWitt, Lenore Tawney, Nick Cave, Anne Wilson.
What would be your best destination in the world?
Tahiti or some other exquisite tropical island.
Stuck on a desert island, three things that you couldn’t do without?
Scissors, Rope, Wine.
What is your favourite colour & why?
Red- it’s powerful.
