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Elizabeth Demaray

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Elizabeth Demaray
NationalityAmerican
EducationUniversity of California at Berkeley, California (BA, 1991; MFA, 1999)
Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture New York, NY (1998)
Known forEnvironmental art, Conceptual art, Sculpture
AwardsNational Studio Award (2002)
Aldrich Emerging Artist Award (2003)
Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation Award (2000)

Elizabeth Demaray is a sculptor and interdisciplinary artist known for her inquiries into the interface between the built and the natural environment.

Demaray has created listening stations for birds that play human music, fabricated alternative forms of housing for hermit crabs from artificial materials, and built light-sensing robotic supports that allow potted plants to roam freely in search of sunlight and water.

Demaray is an associate professor of Fine Arts and head of the sculpture concentration at Rutgers University, Camden. She lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

Education

Demaray received a BA in cognitive psychology at the University of California at Berkeley and a MFA in Art Practice at the University of California at Berkeley.[1] She also studied art at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.[1]

Career

Work

In a 2012 essay, Richard Klein, exhibitions director at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, described Demaray's work:

Demaray provokes complex questions concerning memory, knowledge, and the collaborative cognitive process that exists between artist and viewer, while making a body of work that has consistently confounded expectations by creating connections between diverse and often contradictory bodies of knowledge.[2]

In 2013, Demaray collaborated with engineer Dr. Qingze Zou to create the IndaPlant Project: An Act of Trans-Species Giving.[3] They built light-sensing robotic platforms for houseplants called “floraborgs,” which allow potted plants to roam freely in a domestic environment in search of water and sunlight, and alert other floraborgs to their locations.[4] In an article for Quartz, Christopher Mims wrote:

IndaPlant is the first effort to make plants active participants in their own care. It may be a small step for engineers, but it’s a giant evolutionary leap for plant-kind.[5]

In 2011, Demaray collaborated with lichen researcher Natalie Howe to grow lichen on several buildings in New York City. The objective of her project, Lichen for Skyscrapers, was to connect New Yorkers with the natural world in an immediate way.[6]

n 2010, Demaray worked with an ant researcher at the American Museum of Natural History to create Corpor Esurit, or we all deserve a break today. The artwork offered a colony of ants food from McDonald’s to present a commentary on the effects of the American diet on the creatures that depend on humans for food.[7]

In 2007, Demaray worked with video artist John Walsh to create Inside/Outside: Habitat, on view at the Abington Art Center's Sculpture Park in Jenkintown, PA. The project was designed to explore the musical tastes of local birds, which were offered a selection classical, rock, country and jazz music when they visited 10-foot perches. Demaray said her purpose was to encourage people to think about the impact that humans have on other species.[8]

In 2006, Demaray designed and produced tiny man-made houses for hermit crabs to address a housing shortage that may have resulted from the over-collecting of seashells by humans.[9] Demaray worked with a paleontologist and a mechanical engineer to design the structures for The Hand Up Project, Attempting to Meet the New Needs of Natural Life Forms.[10]

In 2005, Demaray, who upholstered stones and knitted sweaters for plants as part of a campaign that she described as "inappropriate care-giving activities," sewed a 27-foot long upholstered cozy for a dormant 10-ton Nike-Hercules Missile in Sausalito, CA.[11][12] Her Sticks and Stones: The Nike Missile Cozy Project was designed to show the nature of warfare and to familiarize the public with what served as the U.S. Land to air defense during the Cold War.[12]

Teaching

Demaray is an associate professor of Fine Arts and head of the sculpture concentration at Rutgers University, Camden.[1] On the Rutgers, New Brunswick, campus, she is a work group advisor in the Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering and a co-founder of the DigiHuman Laboratory in the Department of Computer Science, which is dedicated to supporting artistic practice in the fields of computer vision and machine learning.[13] She is an alumna of the board of the College Art Association’s New Media Caucus and is a member of the Leonardo Education and Art Forum.[1][14]

Recognition

Demaray has received numerous awards and honors. She received awards from the National Studio Award at the New York Museum of Modern Art/P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, the New York Foundation for the Arts NYFA Fellowship in Sculpture, and the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum.[15][16][17]

Exhibitions

Demaray's work has been exhibited globally. Her galleries and exhibits include the New York MOMA/P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, the New Museum (New York), DADAPost (Berlin, DE), the Lloyd Digital Lab (Amsterdam, NL), the Center d’Art Marnay Art Center (Marnay-sur-Seine, FR), and the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum (San Francisco, CA).[1][18][19][20]

Collections

Demaray’s work is held in the permanent collections of The New Museum, New York, NY; di Rosa Preserve and Foundation, Napa, CA; Francis J. Greenberg Foundation, New York, NY; Oakland Museum of California, Oakland, CA; and the UC Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley, CA.[21]

Personal

Demaray is married to art professor and painter Hugo Bastidas, noted for his large-scale black and white paintings that span geographic and historic time-frames.[22]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e "Elizabeth Demaray: Biography". Rutgers University: Dept. of Fine Arts. Rutgers University. Retrieved 12 October 2016.
  2. ^ Klein, Richard. "Soft Rocks A Workshop with Artist Elizabeth Demaray". Franklin Street Works. Retrieved 12 October 2016.
  3. ^ "Branching Out: Rutgers IndaPlant Project Allows Plants to Move Freely on Robotic Carriages". Rutgers Today, Rutgers University. Retrieved 12 October 2016.
  4. ^ Plafke, James. "Exoskeleton turns plants into faunaborgs so they can autonomously seek sunlight and water". ExtremeTech. Retrieved 12 October 2016.
  5. ^ Mims, Christopher. "Robotic exoskeleton turns everyday houseplants into sun-seeking cyborgs,". Quartz.com. Retrieved 12 October 2016.
  6. ^ Eveleth, Rose. "Artist Paints Lichens on NYC Buildings". Scientific American. Retrieved 12 October 2016.
  7. ^ Prakash, Sheila. "Desert Dwellers on a Fast-Food Diet". New York Times. Retrieved 12 October 2016.
  8. ^ ""Art "For The Birds" Created by Rutgers-Camden Prof". Rutgers Today, Rutgers University. Retrieved 12 October 2016.
  9. ^ Fehrenbacher, Jill. "Prefabs for Hermit Crabs". Inhabitat.com. Retrieved 12 October 2016.
  10. ^ Dunn, Collin. "The Hand Up Project: A Helping Hand to Those in Need". treehugger.com. Retrieved 12 October 2016.
  11. ^ Newman, Andrew Adam. "Make Frills, Not War: A Cozy for a Missile". New York Times. Retrieved 12 October 2016.
  12. ^ a b "Depicting Cold War Weapons". Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. Retrieved 12 October 2016.
  13. ^ "People". Digital Humanities Research Laboratory at Rutgers. Retrieved 12 October 2016.
  14. ^ "Elizabeth Demaray". Leonardo/The International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology (Leonardo/ISAST). Retrieved 12 October 2016.
  15. ^ "National and International Studio Program Participants". New York Museum of Modern Art. Retrieved 12 October 2016.
  16. ^ "Directory of Artists' Fellows: 1985-2013" (PDF). New York Foundation for the Arts. Retrieved 12 October 2016.
  17. ^ "Elizabeth Demaray Wins 2003 AEM Award". Artdaily.com. Retrieved 12 October 2016.
  18. ^ "National and International Studio Program". New York Museum of Modern Art, 2001-2002. Retrieved 12 October 2016.
  19. ^ "Dada Post Residency: Elizabeth Demaray – New York". DADAPost. Retrieved 12 October 2016.
  20. ^ "Cities Made by People". Cintinerary. Retrieved 12 October 2016.
  21. ^ "OMCA Collections: Elizabeth Demaray". Oakland Museum of California. Retrieved 12 October 2016.
  22. ^ Karush Rogers, Teri. "Gotta Move, Gotta Sell". New York Times. Retrieved 12 October 2016.
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