Paper-based artist Elizabeth Mooney is scheduled to give a presentation for the Chautauqua Visual Arts Lecture Series at 6 p.m. tonight in Hultquist Center.
Mooney is a visiting faculty member with CVA and will be teaching a monoprint course, she said.
Her work is currently on view in the “Passion for Paper” exhibition, curated by Susan and John Turben Director of CVA Galleries Judy Barie, on the first floor of Strohl Art Center until Sunday.
Through painting, printmaking and kinetic sculpture, Mooney explores the constructed landscape, particularly as it relates to collective experiences of landscapes, according to her artistic statement.
Mooney’s work explores the spatial relationships that emerge from layering material and reshaping narratives. Through printmaking and collage, Mooney is interested in investigating how different layers can interact with one another to produce different effects and outcomes. Through these spatial relationships, she said, one can be surprised by the outcome.
“I love the process of printmaking, and one of the things that draws me to it is that I always think I know what is going to happen — I have assumptions of what the end result is going to be, and what I really like about the mediated process like printmaking, where something goes to the press, is the element of surprise and chance,” Mooney said.
“You think you know what’s going to occur but the press is always the boss. It’ll make things happen; they’re a little bit more out of my control and I really like that,” she said.
Mooney said that she didn’t have a straight path to working as an artist. For a long time, before she fully committed to studio art as a full-time practice, she was involved in punk and DIY music scenes, and was interested in exploring topics like feminism, art history and other cultural ideas during her undergraduate studies. Throughout all of those many interests, painting remained a constant.
“I was always engaged with painting in some degree or another and it seemed to be this constant that followed me along in my life,” she said.
In her lecture, Mooney will discuss her path and evolution as an artist as well as the ideation and creation processes behind her work.
Mooney received her MFA in painting and drawing at California College of the Arts. She was a Visual Artist Fellow at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center and she is currently an associate professor at Massachusetts College of Art and Design.
