Elizabeth Turk

Tipping Point is ET Projects’ second production, summer 2019 at the Catalina Island Museum. Inspired by the sounds of extinct birds (recordings archived at the Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology), Turk developed an alphabet of symbols and participatory moments. The objective of the opening events was to prompt community reflections, at once serious and light, when facing difficult and overwhelming environmental topics. “Move as if you were the last of a species” was the prompt for the dancers launching the event. Participants lit candles to draw “that which they loved”. Filmed with long exposures and from above, post imagery unveils the impact. The potential of the traces we, as individuals and significantly as a community, leave behind.

Shoreline Project premiered on November 3, 2018 in partnership with the Laguna Art Museum's annual Art & Nature Festival and the City of Laguna Beach. 1,000 participants moved with LED-lit umbrellas along the edge of the Pacific. Filmed by drones, the production revealed the undulations of a single organism, individuals coming together organically, as one form.

Turk's work is also in the collections of the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.; the Weatherspoon Gallery, University of North Carolina, Greensboro; The Mint Museum, Charlotte, NC; The Treasury of Lichfield Cathedral (UK); and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Turk's work has been shown in several solo gallery and museum exhibitions, including, "Elizabeth Turk: Sentient Forms" (2014) at Laguna Art Museum. She has exhibited at the ADAA Art Show, Dayton Art Institute, Dayton Ohio; Ben Maltz Gallery at the Otis College of Art and Design, L.A.; Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery, Scripps College, Claremont, CA; American Institute of Architecture, New York, N.Y.; and Japan Bank Building, Hiroshima.

Turk is the recipient of many awards and grants, including: a MacArthur genius grant, and the Barnett and Annalee Newman Foundation Fellowship, both in 2010; a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship (SARF) in 2011; and a Helena Modjeska Cultural Legacy Award for artistic achievements from Arts Orange County in 2012. She also won a Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant and the NYC Art Commission Excellence in Design Award, both in 2000. She was a 2003 Artist-in-Residence at the McColl Center for Art + Innovation She delivered commencement addresses at Scripps College (2011) and Laguna College of Art & Design (2016). She is featured in the book 50 Contemporary Women Artists, edited by John Gosslee and Heather Zises. In 2019 she delivered the commencement address for VCUarts at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Elizabeth Turk is an artist and native Californian known for her marble sculptures and community installations. She splits time between a studio in Santa Ana, CA and NYC, where she has been represented by Hirschl & Adler Modern since her first exhibition in 2000. She is a MacArthur “Genius” Fellow, a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow, an Annalee & Barnett Newman Foundation and Joan Mitchell Foundation grant recipient, among other awards.

Turk received her BA from Scripps College in 1983 and her MFA from the Rinehart School of Sculpture at the Maryland Institute College of Art in 1994. She launched the CA non-profit ET Projects in 2017 to launch community-based art experiences such as “Shoreline Project” and “Tipping Point.”