 lizabeth Dorbad is most well known for her circus cart assemblages, idiosyncratic bronzes and installations. She is versatile with her processes and has also branched out into video, film and painting. Her work is joyful, theatrical and full of surprise: she brings together unlikely, often found materials and delights in taking objects out of their normal contexts, often lending them magical qualities. The intricate and poetic nature of her early assemblage pieces is sometimes reminiscent of Joseph Cornell; in particular her intimate reworked tins and boxes. Her current influences are wide reaching and versatile, including the painter Cy Twombly and installation artists such as Ann Hamilton, Joseph Beuys and Matthew Barney. She has also drawn from childhood experiences of the circus, bringing elements of performance and the bizarre and outlandish into her work.
Dorbad was born in New Jersey and grew up just outside of New York City, going on to study at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. There she came to concentrate largely on mixed media sculptural work using found objects and materials, which also brought together her exposure to textiles, crafts and painting. Since graduating she has spent much time traveling the United States, living in different cities accumulating experiences, and undertaking various artist residencies. Her introduction to bronze casting came in recent years with a residency on the California central coast. Her largest exhibition to date took place in the spring of 2008 at the end of this residency, where she exhibited four large installation works and a series of bronze castings. There are plans to take this exhibition to other cities, and a book is under development to accompany the show. She is currently involved in the traveling exhibition Some Assembly Required: Race, Gender and Globalization, which will open in Los Angeles at the Craft and Folk Art Museum January 2010. Most recently she has been continuing her bronze and found object projects in different locations in California, with a view to eventually settling in San Francisco. Elizabeth Dorbad was the 1st place winner of the Art Interview 13th International Online Artists’ Competition.
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Elizabeth Dorbad
Ancient Antic
2006
45 x 24 x 4 inches
Mixed Media
Private Collection
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Art Interview: What was your childhood like?
Elizabeth Dorbad: I was born in Hoboken, New Jersey and spent my early childhood in towns outside of New York City. My father worked in Manhattan and my mother took care of the family. We spent a lot of time viewing art and culture in the city. I was very interested in dance, which I studied quite seriously but became primarily interested in the visual arts in my teens.
Art Interview: What university did you attend?
Elizabeth Dorbad: I went to school at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia and had excellent professors who were really thought provoking and fostered my creativity. While I was there I focused in the craft and textile arts. I also took classes in sculpture and painting. The professors forced me to have good working habits and good relationships to whatever I was working on. The program was really open. I was in the textiles department but I was making sculpture and mixed media things that weren't traditional by any means. You could walk into their classes and bring whatever you had - a painting or a sculpture - it was fine, and that's what I did. I ended up finding a lot of materials on the streets of Philadelphia and working with those to develop textile sculpture and mixed media pieces.
As soon as I graduated, I began traveling. I decided to move out West to have a change of scene. I was ready for big changes and I moved around a lot for several years. Every six months I would move on and just enjoy having different experiences.
Art Interview: Were you able to produce art while you were living a nomadic life?
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Elizabeth Dorbad
Conversations with the Soothsayer Birds
16 x 18 x 8 inches
Mixed Media
Private Collection
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Elizabeth Dorbad: Developing ideas was always on the top of my list of priorities, but I just got to a point where I wanted a studio that was stable. So, I got one and traveled when the desire came to me. What made me stop moving around so much was the desire to cultivate more art. I wanted to be serious about my work, which meant I really needed to be present with it. I realized I needed a stable space to work in.
Art Interview: How long did it take before you started approaching galleries?
Elizabeth Dorbad: Currently I'm affiliated with a gallery but I haven't been represented by one, although I think that's probably the path that I'm going to take next. I started applying for a lot of juried shows in different cities - the ones that looked like they had good potential. I just tried to get my work out there. When I settled in Nevada City in Northern California I met an art dealer who was from a New York gallery family. She was fairly young but had a lot of experience in the art world. She had started a gallery and after seeing my work in different venues she came to me and asked me to exhibit in her gallery. Recently she closed the doors of her Nevada City location and she has moved on to a gallery in New York City, where she is primarily exhibiting paintings. I will continue to cultivate my relationship with her gallery but would like to find representation on the West Coast in Los Angeles or San Francisco. The right gallery is really important for me - I need to be represented by someone who will really show the work well. My work is tricky because in addition to my more intimate pieces I also have the large installations. I always wanted to make big unusual things and they need to be in a place that can show experimental work. I've also been developing bronze works that are currently moving into private collections. That's how I'm making a living now - through selling assemblage works and bronze sculptures.
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Elizabeth Dorbad
Owl
18 x 10 x 8 inches
Cast Bronze with Mixed Media |
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Over the past three years, I‘ve had access to a great foundry at a community college in San Luis Obispo, California. I‘ve been able to immerse myself in the process and cast sculpture there affordably. There is a lot of preparation that goes into bronze work but it's pretty intoxicating. I just fell in love with it, which was unexpected - the bronze casting is just thrilling. I think I will always combine it with my big installation work. I would like to make very large bronzes at some point, but right now I still like going to junkyards and working with found materials to make the large work.
Art Interview: What is your current studio space like?
Elizabeth Dorbad: I just finished a residency where I had a huge 6,000 square foot studio space, and in addition was working at the college foundry. Now, I'm in a transitional phase and working as an artist-in-residence at a meditation retreat center in San Luis Obispo, California. My studio is mainly outdoors and in sheds. I am completing a large commission with found objects and scrap metal and I will be back at the foundry in a few weeks, working on pieces there. Afterwards, I will be moving to San Francisco, California.
Art Interview: Why do you want to go to San Francisco?
Elizabeth Dorbad: In the past few years I have been living outside of an art scene. I visit cities often and read contemporary art magazines, but now I'm ready to actually live amongst other artists. I've been living in California for a long time and so I have a lot of connections to people in San Francisco. It’s just a beautiful city where it is possible to have a healthy life. You can find organic food and a good yoga community there. The Bay Area has a solid art scene. There's a renaissance going on right now in Oakland - a lot of good warehouses spaces are opening up for artists and that's very appealing to me. I'm just trying to figure out how I can work in a big space, and have other artists around - that's really what I want to do. I love workspaces with other artists close by. I've been working without that recently, just moving from one rural place to the next, because the spaces were good, the landscape was beautiful and it was very affordable. But now I'm tipping the scales in the direction of making a living from my work, so when I move to the city I can stay focused on making art.
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Elizabeth Dorbad
Soothsayer Birds Leave for Deutschland
16 x 18 x 8 inches
Mixed Media
Private Collection
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Art Interview: You have a very consistent style of work - how did it develop?
Elizabeth Dorbad: It wasn't something that was premeditated. My imagination often works in a non-linear manner and I commonly collage the objects I use in my pieces. Relationships develop between the objects to form a language of symbols. I also imagine my pieces having a sort of spiritual conversation with works of other artists. Sometimes my work takes references from different artists, which I allow to evolve over time. Joseph Beuys, Matthew Barney and Ann Hamilton have all influenced my installation work and some of my gesture work is influenced by Cy Twombly. This simply happens when I research different artists. I get totally absorbed by them and little pieces of influence start coming to me from all over.
Art Interview: When you pull aspects from other artists, you don't appear to take their style. How do you prevent yourself from reproducing their work?
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Elizabeth Dorbad
Bystander
63 x 19 x 17 inches
Mixed Media |
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Elizabeth Dorbad: Early on when I was making assemblage boxes, people were relating my work to Joseph Cornell. So, I looked him up. I've always been a big researcher of other people’s work. I have culminated enough influences that I can avoid references to one single artist. My work also jumps media - I'm not a painter but I'm influenced by Cy Twombly. I love the way that he relates text to image and gesture to expression. This influenced my bronze works and in fact Twombly made bronze works as well, which I only found out later. Really, I think what makes my work my own is a combination of a lot of knowledge of other artists work, crossing media, and running themes that go through my work for years, such as the circus theme.
Art Interview: How do you discover your themes?
Elizabeth Dorbad: I can't pin it down exactly, when I was very young I was more of a performer and a dancer and then visual art was something I got into in my later childhood. But there were different things that influenced me - there were literary influences, such as, A Coney Island of the Mind by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. I remember being impressed by Picasso's early work where he used circus themes. I liked the circus from a very early age. We have the stories from these shows going on in our collective unconscious, so at some point I started developing this. I would develop a character and see how it changes in the theatre of our minds. The circus is great because it explores things in this seemingly light-hearted way that can actually go into the dark and dangerous, more foreboding side of life and human emotional experience.
Art Interview: Does each piece within a series have a different process?
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Elizabeth Dorbad
Sitting and Drinking a Cup of Schokolade
20 x 7 x 4 inches
Mixed Media |
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Elizabeth Dorbad: I think it changes. With the circus theme, it started off with my small box-structure-assemblages - which, even years ago, had little circus themes running through it. Then I started putting some of those on wheels, then suddenly I had a vision and thought, 'I would love to see a room filled with circus carts - small and big, and I would love to do an exhibition one day along those lines.' That was 13 years ago and since then it has manifested. My process has changed a lot over the years - we change as individuals and the conditions for making art change as well. Our physical and emotional state has much to do with the creative process. Now I feel like I'm finally starting to understand my creative process, instead of being ruled by it. I now feel like I can just flow with it. I can more easily identify when and how to cultivate something or when to just let it rest. I have definitely become more committed to my work in the last few years. The whole struggling artist thing can have elements of truth but it comes to a point where you realize you can't let it go - it's who you are, and therefore, you will make it work. So, you make choices creatively and technically, accordingly.
The introduction to bronze sculpture a couple of years ago was a change. I also realized I didn't want to be in a foundry seven days a week - it was just too hard on my body. It is hard for me to plan ahead - with the bronze casting, of course you plan ahead to an extent but I was never a planner - working with junk media is almost like slapping paint on a canvas and pushing it around - it's all direct process like expressionist painting. In that sense I had to compromise in order to start doing bronze work but I was at that point where I was ready to plan a little more. I wouldn't want to have that control over all of the work though- I still really enjoy the direct process. It's important to understand what your body can do physically and emotionally and how the creativity is going to flow best. Having a variety of tasks that I'm working on at once seems to help me. It's good to recognize one's own formula for creativity - there are similarities between people - but the creative process is different with each person.
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Elizabeth Dorbad
Dancer and the Horse
2008
16 x 8 x 7 feet
Mixed Media Installation |
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Art Interview: How long have you been working on your current body of work?
Elizabeth Dorbad: I’ve been working on this series for over ten years now. In the past two years my production level has gone up dramatically - since I have committed myself to living from my art and working full time in my studio. I'm actually in the process of updating the last two years of work on my website: www.elizabethdorbad.com. A dozen bronzes and a video of the large installation works will be added soon. I have also been planning to put a catalogue together. In the last couple of months I realized there is enough work to make a book and that that would be a great project to embark upon.
Art Interview: How much have you had to consider marketing issues since embarking full time on your artwork and how has that affected your creativity?
Elizabeth Dorbad: It has assisted me with my creativity but it has also taken time away from production. There are definitely moments when I feel bogged down with documentation or with the business side of things. I would love to be at the point where I can give that kind of work to different people. But when you start anything, you do most of the stuff by yourself and so it takes a lot of time - it's not my preference really. I love certain parts of it, for instance, I love doing book layouts, but I mostly just want to work with materials and make sculpture. Before I had committed myself to working full time on my art I was doing other things to make a living, such as managing an antique bookshop, doing book restoration and binding. I like to organize and do things like that but I really prefer being creative as often as possible. I have to set a schedule in order to work, it’s just like showing up to work every day. The last couple of months have been incredibly structured. Now, I am ready to start working uninterrupted in my studio.
Art Interview: How did you take the step of becoming a fulltime artist?
This oral history transcript is the result of a digitally recorded interview with Elizabeth Dorbad on July 31, 2008. The interview took place over the telephone between Berlin, Germany and San Luis Obispo, California, USA and was conducted by Brendan Davis for Art Interview Online Magazine. Elizabeth Dorbad updated this interview on July 23, 2009. Lydia Ward wrote the introductory text.
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