Sculptures
Since the late 1990s, Elizabeth Turk has lived in New York, and for several
years has maintained a studio within a marble fabricating facility in Santa Ana,
California.
With an MFA in Sculpture from the Rinehart School at the Maryland Institute, and
after completing several prestigious residencies - including the Kyojima Artist
in Residence Program, Tokyo, Japan and the McColl Center for Visual Art in
Charlotte, NC, Elizabeth Turk returns to Charlotte for her first solo museum
show at the Mint Museum of Art "Vantage Point III Elizabeth Turk - The Collars:
Tracings of Thought" and for a solo show at Joie Lassiter Gallery
"Bellybuttons". The two shows which are running in conjunction with each other
provide a full viewing of Turk's oeuvre. The collars, both sculptures and
etchings, appear architectural and have a fragile skeletal quality that belies
the fortitude of the material, whilst the bellybuttons appear powerfully
substantial despite their size.
Ruling the patterns of all objects within nature and many precisely created
man-made objects is the Fibonacci sequence, which is evident within both Turk's
collar and bellybutton sculptures. The collars demonstrate it in their perfect
curves and through their symmetry and proportions.
The golden mean, which finds its point in the human body at the navel, is
derived from this mathematical series. Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man employed the
golden mean to demonstrate the arithmetics of beauty.
Since the time of the Ancient Greeks, the navel has held a special significance
within most cultures. The Ancient Greeks saw mountains and volcanoes as the
navels of the earth, the founts of life itself. Even today most spiritual paths
acknowledge the fecund capacity of the navel. Hinduism sees the navel as the
source of life and creativity; Buddhism and Zen philosophy say that the navel,
the point where life began pulsating before birth, is the seat of the mind. In
western culture we recognize that instinctual impulses and powerful emotions
come from the gut - the navel. With no two identical in appearance, it is a
unique point in the body, which conversely is a universal point of connectivity
for each one of us.
The show will run October 4th - November 8th in the ground floor gallery of Joie
Lassiter Gallery, 525 North Tryon Street, Charlotte, NC.
A public reception will be held on October 22nd 5-8pm, the artist will be present.