The surprising world revealed by Grum Project artist Elizabeth Duffy
Williston Northampton School’s artist-in-residence program, the Grum Project, welcomes to campus on January 24 the artist Elizabeth Duffy. Duffy inserts charged imagery into intricate patterns in wallpaper and makes meaning out of braided rugs. She prints security envelopes and bank statements on cloth to decorate dresses, coasters, hats and mats. “I am fascinated by how things are made and how taking them apart reveals hidden worlds and the ingenuity of the human imagination,” her artist statement reads.
Duffy will lead a collage project with students in the Arts Intensive program the afternoon of January 24, and give a talk to community members in the Dodge Room that evening.
Her work has been exhibited widely, including at the Drawing Center, The RISD Museum, the Milwaukee Art Museum, the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, White Columns, Wave Hill, and DM Contemporary. She has held residencies at the Bogliasco Foundation in Italy, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, the Sirius Art Centre in Cobh, Ireland, VCCA, Jentel and Ucross. Duffy is the recipient of awards from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Pollock Krasner Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, where she was awarded grants in both Sculpture and Craft in 2019. Her work has been written about in The New York Times, Art News, Art on Paper, the Boston Globe, and many other publications. She has curated exhibitions including Dead Ringer at the Bristol Art Museum and Office Space.
Duffy received her M.F.A. from CUNY/Brooklyn College and her B.A. at Rutgers College. She studied textile conservation at FIT, jewelry making the School of Visual Arts and painting, drawing and sculpture at the New York Studio School. She lives and works in Providence, and teaches in the Art Department at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island and in the Graduate Program at Vermont College of Fine Art.