15 Facts About Alyson Shotz

Alyson Shotz was born on 1964 and is an American sculptor based in Brooklyn, New York.

Alyson Shotz is known for experiential, large-scale abstract sculptures and installations inspired by nature and scientific concepts, which manipulate light, shadow, space and gravity in order to investigate and complicate perception.

Alyson Shotz's artwork has been loosely grouped into three types: expansive, intricate large sculptures and installations that are handmade; minimal, self-contained sculptures that sometimes involve fabrication and elements of chance; and abstract photographs and digital prints based on photographs.

Alyson Shotz's work belongs to the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao and Storm King Art Center, among others.

Alyson Shotz has exhibited at the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, Hirshhorn Museum, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Guggenheim Bilbao, Wexner Center for the Arts and Indianapolis Museum of Art.

Alyson Shotz was born in Glendale, Arizona in 1964, the daughter of an Air Force pilot and a teacher.

Alyson Shotz initially studied geology, but turned to art; science has remained a strong influence on her work.

Alyson Shotz began as a painter, producing colorful images of organic forms, while sometimes integrating photography, collage and video into her practice.

Alyson Shotz would continue to explore the blurring of figure and ground, most similarly, in large-scale outdoor installations such as Mirror Fence and Scattering Screen.

Alyson Shotz combines craftsmanship and process-intensive methods of accumulation and structure-building, often based in underlying concepts from physics, optics and mathematics.

The blend of minimal and organic forms in her art has been compared to that of Eva Hesse she differs in her interest in the viewer as a participant; that emphasis has been related to the conceptual work of Lygia Clark, though Alyson Shotz's entails a more optical than physical participation.

In later work, Alyson Shotz continued to explore perceptual concerns while pursuing a wider range of materials, forms and processes.

In exhibitions at Carolina Nitsch, the Wellin Museum and Derek Eller, Alyson Shotz presented bodies of work relying on chance.

Alyson Shotz created them created by crumpling Japanese Masa paper, photographing and printing it, then crumpling the print.

Alyson Shotz has been awarded fellowships from the Saint-Gaudens Memorial, New York Foundation for the Arts, MacDowell and Stanford University, and received awards from Art Matters, Yale University, the US GSA, and the Pollock-Krasner, Marie Walsh Sharpe and Peter S Reed foundations, among others.