By partnering with Sculpture Space on this exhibition, EFA Project Space begins to fulfill its goal to provide a unique space for collaboration with other art and cultural organizations, thus expanding audiences for the arts while bridging gaps in the art community. Sculpture Space is a nonprofit artists’ workspace dedicated to the needs of artists whose focus is sculpture. It is unique in North America for its service to sculptors and the individual support given to artists who come to Utica, NY to make new work. The program currently selects 20 artists per year for two-month residencies and has helped advance the careers of over 400 national/international artists since 1976.

Surveying work made by Sculpture Space artists over the past five years, In Residence: Recent Projects from Sculpture Space celebrates the crucial role residency programs play in the cultivation of an artist’s creative process.

“Residencies at Sculpture Space are a rare luxury for artists to focus exclusively on their work with support. The shop environment that originally characterized Sculpture Space’s origin has expanded, allowing for the pursuit of the broad array of practices associated with sculpture today. The expansion of practices also incorporates the notion of site – in this case the post-industrial small-scale urban landscape of Utica, NY. This featured selection of works further characterizes ‘sculpture’ as a sensitivity to and facility with a diversity of materials – craft and food items to electronics and light to those more traditionally employed. Selected artists demonstrate great ingenuity in finding, fabricating, and transforming materials into imaginative works, many of which reflect on timely issues. The Elizabeth Foundation is to be commended for supporting and celebrating the creative process by showcasing compelling works selected from the last five years of Sculpture Space residencies.” Christa Erickson, Co-Curator and Sculpture Space Artist-in-Residence, 2007

“Vibrant and fluid, the work created by this small selection of the large array of sculptors who have passed in recent years through Sculpture Space attests to the freedom and unfettered creativity that clearly flowers there. These works also strongly confirm how broad the category of contemporary sculpture is and how many superior talents exist who are still less known and seen than they should be. The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts is to be celebrated – along with these artists – for bringing an increasingly esteemed Utica, New York artists’ resource to Manhattan and forcefully reminding us that potent art is made in the State’s smaller cities too.” Patterson Sims, Co-Curator.