Celia Greiner
Sculpture
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BIO
Celia Greiner is a Chicago artist who creates organic sculptures mainly of wood. She grew up in Chicago in a family of designers and craftspeople and has kept her hands busy from a young age. After receiving a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, majoring in painting, she decided to explore three dimensionality and functionality at the Worcester Center for Crafts in Worcester MA. There she received a certificate in woodworking and the award for Excellence in Craft for her class. Since then she has designed and built custom furniture for residences and a line of kitchen and house wares. Not able to give up on art, her sculpture practice grew out of the desire to make forms opposite to furniture with it’s standard dimensions. She has shown in galleries around the city and has collaborated with Beth Bradfish, a sound artist, to build tactile sound art.
STATEMENT
I make sculptures, primarily of wood but lately, also of wire and screen. My wooden sculptures explore shapes that are simultaneously attractive and repulsive, somewhat like sea creatures. I want them to appear soft and yielding and to have movement, despite being made of hard wood.
My work of wire and screen does not deal with solidity and presence but with diaphanousness, subtlety and vulnerability. This came about due to personal loss and the current pandemic which have generated thoughts of how fragile we are and the fact that we can be taken down by something physically so small. We are porous and vulnerable creatures.
Both wood and screen forms explore vascularity, tenderness and fragility. The insides are just as exposed as the outsides.