Elisabeth Higgins O'Connor. Sculptures from recycled materials
In kindergarten, Elisabeth Higgins O'Connor drew a yellow blob with an orange triangle on a white piece of paper. Her classmates crowded around her when they saw a little duckling in the blob.
More than four decades later, Elisabeth Higgins O'Connor said that moment changed her. It helped her develop as an artist. Over the years, her work has grown in scale and has begun to incorporate different materials. Elisabeth Higgins O'Connor uses materials to explore aspects of frustration, joy and tragedy through their storytelling abilities.
I believe that materials have a language, like poetic language, that can be interpreted, so these materials have a history, a resonance. They've been touched, they've been handled, they've had other lives before living with me.
The artist treats each strip of fabric or piece of cardboard that she applies to the wooden frames of her constructions as brushstrokes or charcoal pencil marks. After layering the materials, Elisabeth Higgins O'Connor secures her work with drywall screws.
Elisabeth Higgins O'Connor uses leftover bedding, quilts, pillows and knitted afghans collected and donated from thrift shops and yard sales. She repurposes found household items, repurposing fabrics from the domestic environment into entirely new pieces.
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