About my process and ideas:
I am a multi-media artist working in ceramics, installation, and collage. I am interested in the ways that art and artifacts are presented and re-presented over time. I collect outdated ephemera--art books, travel guides, and home decorating manuals--as source material for my collages and paintings. My site specific installations and ceramic objects use the language of museum archive and display, often incorporating objects and detritus found on site.
At the heart of my practice are ambivalent vessels that hover between two and three dimensions, in which the idea of utility is often thwarted or abandoned. The vases are made from slab-rolled clay cut into shapes like a dressmaker’s pattern and pieced together to create gently dimensional forms that invoke the pictorial plane. The final objects range from functional to ephemeral; some works are solidly constructed and ready for everyday use, others taped together and propped against a crutch or scaffold for display. Though my forms reference the history of excavated ceramics, the layers of embellishment incorporate various non-traditional and unexpected materials. I embrace the cracks and fissures of the firing process as an opportunity for repair. A broken ceramic handle is re-affixed with brightly colored Fimo clay or held together with conspicuous painter’s tape, highlighting the passage of time as an accumulation of provisional and improvised encounters.
Rather than create discreet works that function independently, I often create families of contingent artworks. These arrangements of objects, which might include shelves, paintings, glaze test tiles, photos, and paper scraps, along with framing devices such as thread and stretcher bars, reveal the margins or periphery of my thought processes. The tests and scraps, the false starts and partial ideas are all welcomed and given voice. The work is active, rather than passive, an ever growing collection of amendments, reiterations, translations.
By rearranging and regrouping elements over time in different venues, I invite unstable, fluid narratives to creep into institutional and domestic spaces. The various representations of vessels and sculptures, cut from books that span decades of changing printing technique and paper quality, offer a way of tracking objects over time, and allow me to see these artifacts as mutable things, contingent and fluid in meaning. Similarly, each new iteration of a composition is an opportunity to explore the nature of materials in space, to place each element with an appreciation of the light, color, shape, and history of the rooms that house them.
My studio is in Poughkeepsie, NY. I am happy to have you over for a visit!
Also, I love this interview with Susan Klein at the Coastal Post, 2/2020 (thanks Susan!)
SELECTED ONE AND TWO PERSON EXHIBITIONS
2026, upcoming, Thumb Studio, Fukuoka, Japan
2025, upcoming, Transliteration, Boise State University, Boise, ID
2024 Object Memory, Available Items, Tivoli, NY
2022: Quirk Gallery, Richmond VA
2020: Staying With The Trouble, Prompts for Practice, I created a six week prompt-based
project for the community connected to AIR Gallery, in response to COVID19 quarantine
2018 Daily Vase, a one year project wherein I created a vase every day during 2018, partial
inventory shown at Greenpoint Hill, Brooklyn, NY
2017 The Center for Morale, Welfare, and Recreation, a collaboration with Mia Rovegno
wherein we invited 12 artists/musicians to make work on Governors Island with us while I held
a residency at LMCC
Still Life, Staple Goods, New Orleans, LA
Only Connect, A.I.R. gallery, Brooklyn, NY
Fragment, Greenpoint Hill, Brooklyn, NY
House Work, 437A Pulaski Street, Brooklyn, NY
2016 Collected Works: A Brief History of Artists Alliance Inc, Cuchifritos, New York, NY
House Work, 409 Edgecombe Ave, NY, NY
2015, Impermanent Collection, Bethel University, Minneapolis, MN
2014, Species of Spaces, Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, NY
2012, Shelf Life, Cuchifritos, NY, NY
2010 Divisibility, Bell Gallery, Brown University, Providence, RI
Subtle, 301 Gallery, Montserrat College of Art, Beverly, MA
Alison Owen, Archer Gallery, Clark College, Vancouver, WA
2009 Housing Project, Flatlands, id11, Delft, The Netherlands
Ballast, Artspace, New Haven, CT
2008 Liminal, Eastern Washington University, Cheney, WA
2007 Retrace, Vox Populi, Philadelphia, PA
The Spaces in Between, Tilt Gallery, Portland, OR
2004 Betsy Davis and Alison Owen, Bank Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2025 Object Lessons, Concord Art Association, Concord, MA
2023 Freaky Flowers, SEPTEMBER, Kinderhook, NY
A Painting is a Painting is a Painting, ArtPort, Kingston, NY
2021 Nice to See You Again, Underdonk Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
Pollinator, Gold Scopophilia Gallery, Montrose, NJ (three person show)
2019 Spectral Matter, Johnson Gallery, Bethel University, Minneapolis, MN
2018, TSA Flatfiles show, Brooklyn, NY
2017 Taken on Trust, AIR house, Governor’s Island, NY
2016 Collection, Chashama, New York, NY
Landzaft, Lesley Heller Workspace, NY, NY
2015 Labor, Proteus Gowanus, Brooklyn, NY
2013, Middle Zone, Projekt722, Brooklyn, NY
2012, Interrogations, Interventions and Modifications: Four Artists Employ Architectural
Strategies, Freedman Gallery, Albright College, Reading, PA
2011 Beyond Beautiful and Useful, Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, Houston, TX
Wallworks, DeCordova Museum, Lincoln, MA
2010 Curiouser, Providence Museum of Natural History, Providence, RI
2009 The Austerity Cookbook, The Soap Factory, Minneapolis, MNBeauty Underfoot, Smack Mellon, NY, NY
De/Construct II, 150 Chestnut, Providence, RI
2007 Here and Elsewhere, Bronx Museum of Art, NY, NY
2004 Housebound, Sabina Lee, Los Angeles, CA
2003 Claremont Graduate University: A Selection, Riverside Art Museum,
Riverside, CA
AWARDS/HONORS/RESIDENCIES
2020 Grant, The Belle Foundation, Palo Alto, California
2018, Women’s Studio Workshop Residency, Rosendale, NY
2017, Joan Mitchell Center Residency, New Orleans, LA
2017, Process Space Residency, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, NY, NY
2017 Winter Workspace Residency, Wave Hill, Bronx, NY
2016 Lower East Side studio residency, Artists Alliance Inc, NY, NY
2016, A.I.R. gallery fellowship, Brookyln, NY
2016, Joan Mitchell Center Residency, New Orleans, LA
2015, Hambidge Center for Arts and Science, Rabun Gap, Georgia
2011 Hot Picks, Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, NY
2011, Finalist, McColl Fellowship, Rhode Island
2010 New Genres Fellowship, Rhode Island State Council for the Arts
2009 Flatlands Residency, id11, Delft, The Netherlands
2008 Soaring Gardens Residency, Pennsylvania
2006 Artists-in-the-Marketplace, Bronx Art Museum, NY, NY
2002 Artist Grant, Washington State Council for the Arts
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Susan Klein Visits Alison Owen, The Coastal Post, 2/11/2020
Domestic Intervention, Floromancy, 8/4/2019
Alison Owen, Ceramics, Architectural Digest, 9/14/2018
Brownstoner, 9/25/2018
Flat Earth, the work of Alison Owen, The Women’s Studio Workshop, 8/2018
Alison Owen Explores Form and Function, Kadie Yale, Interiorsandsources.com, 3/7/2018
Thursday Spotlight: Alison Owen, Will Owens, Greenpointers.com, 2/16/2017
Alison Owen Is In Love With You, Skye Gilkerson, 2/25/2017
Getting to the Heart of Architecture: What’s Inside?, Ron Schira, Reading Eagle, 10/14/2012
Top Ten Shows of 2011 (Wallworks at DeCordova Museum), Gregg Cook, The Providence
Phoenix, 12/2011
Curiouser, Judith Tolnick Champa, Artscope, 1/2011
Curiouser, Cate McQuaid, Boston Globe, 1/04/2011
Top Ten Shows of 2010 (RISCA award show), Gregg Cook, The Providence Phoenix,
12/22/2010
Illuminating Space, Martina Windels, East Side Monthly, October 2010
Dirt and Dust as Art in Divisibility, Rafael Chaiken, The Brown Daily Herald
Your Tax Dollars at Work, Gregg Cook, The Providence Phoenix, 2/11/2010
Critic’s Picks: The Austerity Cookbook, Artforum.com, 9/2009
Liminal: Alison Owen, essay by Nancy Hathaway, 4/2008
Alison Owen at Tilt, ultrapdx.com, 6/2007
Getting to See What's Right in Front of You: Alison Owen at Tilt, portlandart.net, 6/2007
Here and Elsewhere, exhibition catalogue, essays by Joao Ribas and
Erin Riley-Lopez, 2007
Bye-Bye Manhattan, Ins&Outs magazine, summer 2006
The Idea and The Possible, Chuck Twardy, Las Vegas Weekly, 8/10/06Jerry Cullum, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 3/3/5
The Value of Having Some Space, Holly Myers, Los Angeles Times, 12/24/04
New American Paintings, volume 49, 12/03