Elinore Noyes

Bio

Elinore Noyes is a multimedia artist and writer based in Kansas City, MO. She will graduate with a BFA in Ceramics and Art History with a Minor in Social Practice at the Kansas City Art Institute. Her time at school has allowed her to develop a diverse skill set, explore academic and creative writing, and participate in several exciting opportunities. In 2019, her artwork submission was selected to be fabricated in aluminum for the 2019 Zahner Student Design Competition. She completed a year long internship with Rae Stern, assisting her with her solo exhibition Rae Stern: In Fugue at the Belger Crane Yard Studios. She has exhibited work in ten group shows, including the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts Juried Student Exhibition. Her study of socially engaged art has led her to collaborate with her peers, include participants, and work in film and photographic media. Across visual art and writing, she strives to elevate others while pursuing her own creative endeavours.

Artist Statement

My work explores subjective experience through the metaphor of materiality. I fuse painterly aesthetics with concrete forms to create sculptures that are both figurative and abstract. My first artistic interest was painting: I made portraits of myself and people around me using color to emphasize emotion. Then, as a ceramicist, I learned to communicate with viewers more directly using three dimensional language. I approach the physical properties of clay as metaphors for my experience and relationship to the world. I engage with the physical context outside of my work through clay impressions, outdoor installations, and found object collage. Those external elements are symbols for place and community as I incorporate them in my sculpture. I reimagine found and raw materials through processes of painting. What begins as found, random, or “other” becomes meaningful to me as I work with it: what was unknown becomes known. My practice is a way to work with other people and incorporate outside material at the same time it is a process of creating sculpture. I discover beauty by experimenting with the physical properties of my materials. In this way I demonstrate the ability of art to create value through painterly transformation. This metaphor represents my belief that people can enrich rather than deplete the environment through creative action.

Exhibitions