Phyllis Green is an artist whose practice involves sculpture, video and installation art. Based in Santa Monica, she has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, as well as grants from the City of Santa Monica, California Community Foundation, Durfee Foundation, Pollock-Krasner Foundation, California Arts Council, National Endowment for the Arts, Canada Council and British Columbia Cultural Fund. In 1996, she was among the first to be awarded a C.O.L.A. grant by the City of Los Angeles. In 2000, she was appointed to the Santa Monica Arts Commission, serving, as its chair from 2004 to 2006. She is married to the photographer Ave Pildas.[1]
Phyllis Green | |
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Born | |
Nationality | Dual American and Canadian |
Education | University of Manitoba;University of California Los Angeles |
Known for | Sculpture, Video, Ceramics |
Spouse | Ave Pildas |
Awards | Guggenheim Fellowship, California Community Foundation |
Website | www.phyllisgreen.net |
Although Green was born in Minneapolis, she grew up in Winnipeg and attended the University of Manitoba, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts in 1971.[2] Her crocheted Boob Tree (1975) was the catalog-cover and poster image for "Woman as Viewer," an all-women artists exhibition at the Winnipeg Art Gallery.[3][4] Thirty-six years later, she restored Boob Tree for "Winter Kept Us Warm" (2012) at Plug In ICA, Winnipeg, Manitoba.[5] Exemplary of its feminist icon status, painter Margaret Shaw-MacKinnon included a painted photo of it in her painting Boob Tree Revisited: Forty Years to Measure Change (2019).
In 1978, she moved to California to pursue graduate studies in art and earned an MFA from the University of California Los Angeles in 1981.[2]
Green's earlier works grew out of the Feminist Art Movement, while her recent work has found inspiration in the Vedas, Hindu's sacred scripture.[6][2] Doug Harvey notes how her "formally beautiful body of work somehow engages art history, contemporary social and political issues and heartfelt mystical spiritualty without missing a beat.[2]
In 2011, Green's survey Splendid Entities: 25 Years of Objects by Phyllis Green opened at the Ben Maltz Gallery, Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles, CA.[7][8][2]
The body of work for which Green has received the most recognition is known as the Turkish Bath (1994) series, which was inspired by a late Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres painting of the same name.[2] Art historian Jeanne Willette contrasts both artists' efforts: "Pink and nude female slaves loll indolently, smile demurely, and are displayed for the pleasure of the male viewer. This overabundance of available female flesh is one of the more compelling images of the conspicuous consumption of human beings from the previous century. For the feminist Green, the idea of woman-as-commodity at the mercy of the male consumer is demeaning. In response, the artist sought to redeem femininity by addressing issues of decoration and ornament in her own version of Ingre's The Turkish Bath."[9]
Green has had solo exhibitions at numerous commercial galleries, including Chimento Contemporary (2017),[10][2] LAM Gallery (2015),[2][11] Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects (2003), Lemon Sky Projects (1998), LASCA Gallery (1996) and Jan Baum Gallery (1988, 1990, 1993 and 1994), as well as Los Angeles Central Library(2013), and university galleries tied to Mount St. Mary's University (2016), Otis College of Art and Design (2011), Long Beach City College (1988 and 2009), Rio Hondo College (1995), Cal-State Bakersfield (1994), Pierce College (1991), Whittier College (1987) among others.
In addition to being included in Los Angeles County Art Museum's Made in California: Art, Image and Identity (2000), Green's sculptures have been featured in national exhibitions at Long Beach Museum of Art, Santa Monica Museum of Art, the Getty Center, Mulvane Art Museum(Topeka), Tucson Museum of Art, Laguna Art Museum, Arizona State University Art Museum, UCLA Hammer Museum, as well as international exhibitions in Berlin, Venice, Bohemia, Shanghai and Glasgow.
Green was co-director of the Christopher Isherwood Foundation in Santa Monica from 2011 to 2018.[2] She taught at University of Southern California's Roski School of Art and Design from 2002 to 2015. From 1996 to 2008, she taught at the University of California Los Angeles and from 1989 to 2011, she taught in the Art Department of Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles.[12] In 2003, she was a visiting artist at the University of Colorado, Boulder. She also taught at California State University-Fullerton in 1998, Glendale Community College in 1992, Claremont Graduate University in 1990 and Emily Carr College of Art from 1982 to 1983.
From 2007 to 2008, she curated the Scripps Annual, Scripps College, Claremont, CA
From 1996 to 1998, she hosted the radio show "LOOK/ hear" on KXLU 88.9 FM in Los Angeles.
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