Artist Statement

This has always been the work of art: to inspire the senses -- to make the body feel -- without necessarily direct experience, through signs, colors, sounds, movement, and so on. At its highest, the experience and the making of art are identical.

Accordingly, my work is usually interactive and kinetic in nature. I strive to make pieces in which the viewer interface is both the form and function of the piece. I want people to remember themselves, in much the same way that babies discover their fingers. When my work is successful, the piece is completed by the viewer-participant and she/he continues her/his journey more aware and delighted in being a body.

Biography

After studying philosophy and religious studies as an undergraduate at Tulane University in New Orleans, Billie Grace Lynn went on to earn an MFA in Sculpture at the San Francisco Art Institute.  She is currently an Associate Professor of Sculpture at the University of Miami.

She has had solo exhibitions of her work in California, Florida, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington, and in China, and has participated in numerous group exhibitions, including shows at the Museum of Art & Design in New York City, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Georgia, SPACES Gallery in Cleveland, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, and the Bernice Steinbaum Gallery and MOCA/Goldman Warehouse in Miami, as well as an exhibition traveling throughout Germany.  Her most recent solo exhibitions were at the Boise Art Museum and John Michael Kohler Arts Center. Billie has also won several awards and fellowships, including a 2007 South Florida Cultural Consortium grant, and fellowships from Art Matters and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.  In 2011 she won the West Prize awarded by the West Collection. She has participated in artist residencies at the Headlands Center for the Arts, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.