We’re thrilled to launch our Artist Spotlight series, which will virtually highlight the amazing work of artists with disabilities until our Open Door Galleries reopen. For our first week, we’re featuring the work of Liz Doles, a Boston-based multifaceted artist who explores the world through a variety of media, including textiles. Liz’s work has been featured in both Open Door Galleries, and her current exhibit “The Midnight Caller and Other Stories” is on view at the Bromfield Gallery in Boston through January 31.
In Liz’s words:“The Midnight Caller and Other Stories” are part of a body of work that is a culmination or collision of painterly instincts, colorist proclivities, affinity with Art Brut and the comfort of old clothes. The color energizes and the juxtaposition of disparate elements such as labels, souvenir tchotchkes, painted bits et al. slap the imagination into alertness and yield joy.
My life as an artist has been as a painter, a graphic designer, a printmaker, photographer, draughtsperson and teacher, with work in the collection of The Zimmerli Museum at Rutgers University, University of Massachusetts Boston and numerous private collections. It has been seen in exhibition at The Smithsonian Institute, The Kennedy Center, The Sri Lankan Consulate in New York, the American Embassy in Colombo, The Print Center in Philadelphia, The Open Door Gallery in the Worcester Art Museum in Worcester Massachusetts, The Open Door Gallery in Boston, and the Harbor Gallery at the University of Massachusetts Boston. I have had the opportunity to teach many facets of the art making process in Egypt, Japan, Nepal, Singapore and locally in Cambridge and Boston and to participate in domestic and international art residencies.
I was seduced in Sri Lanka, first by the Indic culture of color, used intuitively to frame experience and define reality and then by the universe of textiles I found there. Based in Colombo for two years, I traversed the island and created a portfolio of pinhole photographs of Sri Lanka’s architectural heritage and a suite of photographic portraits of ordinary but extraordinary Lankans as a Fulbright grantee after which I stayed to teach and continue these projects. When I returned to the States, I delved into a new method for me of expression, using clothing labels, remnants, findings and scraps as painterly elements in picture making. As this work evolved it has grown in scale, intentionality, materials, subject matter and scope of vision.
My association with Open Door Arts/Open Door Galleries began in 2010 when I exhibited with the national VSA in the Revealing Culture exhibition at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC. I have enjoyed the opportunity to show my work at the Open Door Galleries in Boston and Wocester. Open Door Arts has provided support and guidance in great measure to me as an artist and personally for over ten years and for which I am very grateful.
“The Midnight Caller and Other Stories” is on view until January 31, 2021, at the Bromfield Gallery:45 Harrison Ave, Boston, MA 02118www.bromfieldgallery.comOpen Friday – Sunday, 12 – 5 pm
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