Details

First Name

Bobbie

Last Name

Meier

Username

bobbiem

Bio

Bobbi Meier is a Chicago-based visual artist. Life’s frustrations, joys, and fears are embedded into her abstract sculptures, drawings, and installations through provocative use of materials including; pantyhose, spandex, porcelain, and found home furnishings. Ms. Meier has been awarded residencies at; The John Michael Kohler Arts/Industry Program, The Ragdale Foundation, The Vermont Studio Center, Ox-Bow School of Art and Artist’s Residency, Anderson Ranch, and Sanskriti-Kendra, in New Delhi. Her work has been widely exhibited regionally and nationally and is in the collection of the Kohler Foundation and John Michael Kohler Art Center. She is a co-director of ADDS Donna artist-run space. She earned her MA in Art Education (2000), and MFA in Fiber and Material Studies (2011), from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Website

http://www.bobbimeier.com

Statement

Statement

Sex, secrets, and Surgery provide the impetus for abstract body-referential sculptures, photo-based collage, and installations created as emotional repositories to life situations which cannot be changed. Growing up in the Midwest, raised by a Southern Belle and a NY prep- school Catholic; proper manners, keeping the “dirty laundry” hidden away, and repressed sensuality are important underpinnings to my work.

I create voyeuristic invitations to visit uncomfortable situations with desire and embarrassment towards the body. Manipulating sexually loaded materials — spandex and pantyhose, bits of lace, porcelain, and gel medium — provocative forms question viewers perceptions. Organic shapes allude to creases and folds of the body. A dichotomy of seduction and revulsion exists, where fragments are re-constructed to become assemblages of grotesque beauty. Hand-sewn production is simultaneously an act of aggression, catharsis, and remembrance of surgeries, illnesses and my role as a caregiver.