About The Artist

Sculptor and installation artist Lucy Slivinski works with found objects to create conceptual spaces of human connection. Drawing upon ideas of recycling, regeneration, and interconnectedness, the works in Soul Touch seem at once repelling and inviting, asking the viewer to consider the materials as objects of consumption and waste, but, more importantly, as tools that generate discourse and encourage energetic, physical engagement. In posing complex dynamics such as this, Slivinski's work lends a unique and innovative tint to notions of decay and beauty, promoting neither one nor the other, but rather intertwining and even collapsing the two together. Using bottles, wire hangers, chairs, mufflers, and a vast array of other found and recycled materials, Slivinski synchronizes the harsh tensions in her work to produce structures and systems that both bend to natural forces and defiantly resist them. Individual pieces cling together as energetically as they threaten to break apart; materials heap themselves into masses, and at the same time, beg to be unwoven. The works in Soul Touch demonstrate Slivinski's unique ability to harness opposing forces in the name of balance, and to draw beauty and tenderness from the anonymous and the disposable.  'Lucy Slivinski, a sculptor in Chicago who makes lighting fixtures out of salvaged metal scraps, attributes her affinity for recycling to her grandparents, who recycled as a matter of necessity during the Depression. Wonder Bread bags, with their red, blue and yellow polka dots, she said, were crocheted into rugs; even stray pieces of string would be collected and crocheted "into a container for a Kleenex box," she said. "I was always picking up found objects, anything that caught my eye, little pieces of glass, pieces of metal wire."' -- Elaine Louie, New York Times

 

Artist's Statement

" I live in the collaborative space of ideas, conception and construction.    My process with materials is focused on found objects integrated into conceptual art making, inspiring me by all connections and contributions.  My work is the investigation of connectivity.  I am both humbled and amazed at the regenerative power of life.... Through recycling, we have blessed opportunities to reshape things that are perceived as decay, into replenished mysteries of beauty."

 
"I am a true  believer and a seer of the creative possibility."                     
- Lucy Slivinski

 

View her exhibit that includes 8 large scale sculpures at 300 S. Riverside Plaza through January 2015.   Brought to you by King Art Collective in partnership Packer Schopf Gallery. Contact Amy King or Aron Packer with inquiries.