Benefit v.14 celebrates the art in everything on February 8, highlighting the culinary excellence of J. Scott Catering, Tim Bellew Food, and Birchtree Catering. This week, we’re featuring the taste of texture by spotlighting artists who dabble in wood, clay, metal, and more for the best in tactile treats.
Ava Blitz carves rock, snaps the digital world, and morphs the environment into anthropological pieces that wink in and out of ambiguity. She has created public installations in Philadelphia, Japan, and Scotland, bringing ecological humor around the globe.
Can you give me a bit of background on your arts career?
I have a mixed career, I do both sculpture and two dimensional works. In the city I’ve done a few public art projects, also abroad. In Japan in particular, and recently in Scotland. The public work is sculpture, and usually multiple piece installations that work with the environment. So either climbing a wall, or dug into the ground, or floating. It’s very much centered on the site. I also work a lot with works on paper: printmaking, drawing, painting, and also digital photography.
Do you find that the different mediums you work in tend to influence each other?
The different mediums are so much a part of the aesthetic. The materials, the process, the site, all of that affects the end game.
I read on your website that biology and anthropology influence your work. Can you tell me more about that?
I tend to make work that’s quite ambiguous. It talks about environmental concerns in a humorous way, so that things often look like they’re from botany or biology, geology, anthropology in terms of man’s place in nature. Sometimes they look like habitats, houses, tools, and the interconnectedness of everything.
Would you say that your pieces function as modern-day artifacts?
Meaning there’s a timelessness to them? I think so, yes. Because they’re also of the past, the present, the future.
Do you have any public installations that you’re working on right now?
I’m working on one for Scotland. And this is going to be a digital, wallpaper image. It’s going to be 16 different rooms, and within these public rooms, I’m going to do variations where I change scale, shape, color. The variations themselves that go from room to room become the installation.
Can you tell me about the piece you’ll be donating to Benefit v.14?
It was originally carved in stone, and then cast in a variety of materials. Again, is it plant like, animal like, is it earth, sea, or water. Geology, the elements are important in my work. It’s a small block, and in the future I have plans to create a bigger installation: whether it’s a wall, or an architectural structure to hold plants, it can be a building block to a greater structure.
Bid on Ava Blitz’s work in advance on Bidpal, or join us at Benefit v.14 on Saturday, February 8
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