Meet the Artist
Artist Bio
Marguerite Elliot is a sculptor based in the Bay Area. Her work has focused on feminist, environmental, social justice, and anti-nuclear, and environmental issues. She received her B.A. from Pitzer College, and taught at the Los Angeles Woman’s Building, and Otis College of Art and Design.
She has participated in international artist residencies. Her public sculpture can be seen in sculpture parks in the United States and Europe. Recently, her early work during her time in Los Angeles was archived at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles.
Elliot has exhibited her work in numerous solo and group shows in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York City, and is in numerous public and private collections including the New York Museum of Modern Art. Her work has been reviewed in major national newspapers and art publications including the Los Angeles Times, Village Voice, Art Week, and the Washington Post. She is a recipient of a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Among her recent publications is the book The Woman’s Building and Feminist Art Education, 1973-1991: A Pictorial Herstory, published in conjunction with the Getty Initiative and Otis College of Art and Design.
Ms. Elliot lives in Marin County, California. She is an avid hiker and a curious world traveler/explorer ✈️
Artist Statement
Growing up on a small farm in rural Virginia, I spent many hours walking through fields and along stream banks. This was my first experience of deeply connecting to the earth. I feel a deep affinity with nature and the natural cycle of life. My art today has a direct connection to my years growing up in the country. As an artist, I work with steel and natural objects such as seedpods, leaves, and small stones. Although the intense heat of my welding torch transforms the steel, melting and bending it, even steel is transitory, eventually rusting away to nothing.
Concerned with the current environmental destruction, loss of species, and irrevocable environmental changes taking place all over the world, my work functions as both a reliquary and a shrine, to what is lost or soon may be lost.
Process