Alicia Eggert

Portland, ME
Residency: September – October 2013

Project Description
During my time in residence at Sculpture Space, I completed three large-scale projects. I tried to take full advantage of the woodworking and welding equipment and the large, high-ceilinged studio space. The tools, equipment and space enabled me to make large-scale work I wouldn’t have been able to make in my own studio in Maine.

The first project I undertook was a continuation/expansion of an interactive sculpture that I had begun prior to my arrival, titled Lost Gloves. It consists of an animated collection of winter gloves and mittens my partner, Mike Fleming, and I had been finding on the street over the last several years. The gloves are mounted on metal rods at the approximate heights of their former owners’ raised hands, and they are animated by servo motors and motion sensors, so they wave and greet people as they approach. I worked on constructing bases and mounts for 15 new gloves, and I worked on wiring the electronics and programming the gloves so that each one had a unique waving motion.

The second project I completed was a sculpture titled AHA, which consists of a large mirror mounted to a plywood and welded steel structure. Two tall, painted wood letters, an A and half of an H, stand in front perpendicular to the mirror so that when you view the sculpture on an angle it spells the word “AHA.”

The third project was also a continuation of work I had begun prior to my arrival at Sculpture Space. YAY (2011) was originally a wall-mounted sculpture that consisted of 32 wall-hanging box fans covered by red and silver used car lot streamers that spelled the word YAY. I remade this sculpture to be free-standing in space, mounting the fans on industrial steel shelving units instead of hanging them on the wall. I also made a custom electronic controller that could turn the fans on and off at regular intervals.

In addition to focusing on my own work at Sculpture Space, I tried to be as active as possible in Utica’s art community, in hopes of meeting and sharing my work with local artists and educators. Lost Gloves (2013) were included in Opu-Lens, a one-night exhibition at the Stanley Theater, curated by Jenna North.

All three of these sculptures were included in a solo exhibition at Artisphere in Arlington, Virginia, which I installed immediately after my residency. The exhibition, titled Everything You Are Looking For, received a full-page review in the Washington Post.

About the Artist
Alicia Eggert is an interdisciplinary artist whose work primarily takes the form of kinetic, electronic and interactive sculpture. She received a bachelor’s degree in Interior Design from Drexel University in Philadelphia, and then practiced at an architectural firm in New York for several years before earning an MFA in Sculpture from Alfred University in New York. Her artwork, which remains strongly rooted in design, focuses on the relationship between language, image and time. It has been exhibited at institutions both nationally and internationally, including the CAFA Art Museum in Beijing; the Triennale Design Museum in Milan; ISEA2012 at the Albuquerque Museum of Art and History in New Mexico; Cyberfest 2012 in St. Petersburg, Russia; Sculpture By the Sea in Sydney, Australia; and throughout the US, UK, Europe and Canada. Her work has been featured in publications such as Typoholic: Material Types in Design, The Foundations of Digital Art and Design, and ASPECT V.21: A Good Place To Stop. Alicia was recently named a 2013 TED Fellow and awarded the Grand Prize in the Dave Bown Projects 6th Semiannual Competition. She currently lives in Portland, Maine, and is an Assistant Professor of Art at Bowdoin College.