Check out Elizabeth Stringer’s Artwork

Today we’d like to introduce you to Elizabeth Stringer.

Elizabeth, we’d love to hear your story and how you got to where you are today both personally and as an artist.
Being raised within a household of two doctors in Long Beach, California, I fell in love with science fiction & fantasy books and old-school sci-fi films like Silent Running and Westworld. When I grew up, I honestly thought that I was going to be that scientist from Jurassic Park, bringing dinosaurs back into this world from extinction. Throughout middle and high school I maintained a constant diet of sci-fiction & fantasy while drawing classical art, that I saw when traveling with my family, mixed with the hyper-vibrant science fiction covers. At the time, I was still obsessed with everything about biology and thought that was my path. So after high school, I went to the University of California San Diego (UCSD) for Human Biology. In the beginning, I was going to only minor in art studio – but soon realized that all the exciting classes weren’t included in the minor, so I chose to double major. I started obsessively making art and wanted to find a way to link the two, science and art, in my future.

While at UCSD, I took a Museums Studies Class at Mesa Community College that taught me how to be a responsible artist with some tips about the art world in general. From there, while continuing to make my art, and some scientific illustrations along the way, I have dived deep into the world of arts education. I have been a gallery educator at Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (MCASD), I am now the Executive Assistant to the Director of inSite and currently an artist teaching ceramics and sculpture at La Jolla Country Day School. During the day I teach, but every other hour I spend on my own art, linking science and art together to share with viewers in my own nerdy, Cali- kid way.

We’d love to hear more about your art. What do you do and why and what do you hope others will take away from your work?
I am a multi-media artist, but the main material I like using right now is fragrance because I believe it can connect so many aspects of the human experience into one moment when you, the viewer, smell it. I use ceramics to contain the smells that I am interested in, making the form of the ceramic match the smell’s histories.

For example, a “fresh garden” smell, consists mainly of the molecule Geosmin, a chemical secreted by a group of bacteria named Actinomycetes when they die. Not only are these bacteria responsible for most of the antibiotics humans use, but to achieve such a rich garden smell means that most of these bacteria are warring and dying on the soil floor that we call beautiful. However, does this information matter to the viewer when this smell could bring them back to the garden where they spent their childhood with a grandparent, had their first date, or even traveled abroad to one summer. Hopefully, these smell sculptures are a way to get people to start thinking about their relationships to biochemistry and time, as we are made up only of molecules.

I like to think of these materials (ink, vellum, oil paints, ceramic, and fragrance) as a type of drawing connecting a person’s memory to a historical myth or an aspect of our biochemistry or maybe even poetry that can be found within one tiny microcosm of microbiology.

Have things improved for artists? What should cities do to empower artists?
The hardest condition that I believe today’s artists are up against is a lack of respect towards the arts by society. Without respect, there will never be value in what artist’s today are doing. In schools today we separate creativity and different ways of thinking as inferior to that of math and science. We are training (and have already taught) our society to think of art as something unnecessary or only as something of leisure. Artists are cultural producers. To separate art from a definition of a thriving society is deeply worrisome. Everything within society needs to be linked together: the scientist discovering the next cure for autoimmune diseases, the architect designing a building to describe and personify a city, the engineer coming up with the newest and greenest form of building material, the computer scientist developing technology for the needs of a community – all of these individuals need to not only be informed by artists and culture but most importantly need to be able to make decisions with creativity and passion. Without inherent value with what artists are doing in society, conditions will always be hard for an artist.

San Diego can start making a difference through better arts integration into public and private schools, using art as a tool to create a better understanding of subjects and breaking apart the silos we have built of each subject. As my dad once said, in today’s society a heart doctor who only does tests on the heart might not realize that their patient is actually dying/suffering from liver failure, it takes a full understanding of the body, mind, and spirit- with the collaboration of other doctors -to find what can make this person better. The future of our society depends on its citizens to make creative and critical decisions about its future, building up each other not isolating one another.

Do you have any events or exhibitions coming up? Where would one go to see more of your work? How can people support you and your artwork?
As an artist I am beginning to realize that categories in the art world are inconsequential, so I am going to curate shows with specific themes and invite artists from both Baja California and internationally. These shows will most likely be pop-up exhibits around different areas of San Diego, so please keep an eye out for exhibitions in alternative spaces. My goal with these unconventional spaces is to hopefully engage the public in a genre that sometimes seems to take itself too seriously.

On a personal note, I am currently in the throws of creating new work to exhibit hopefully by the end of summer – not in a specific gallery but a location of my choosing. Finally, please check out my website at elizabethjstringer.com If you want to be on my mailing list or ask questions about my art, please email me at elizabethjstringer84@gmail.com.

Contact Info:

• Address: 9679 Easter Way, San Diego, CA 92121
• Website: https://elizabethjstringer.com
• Phone: 562-705-2672
• Email: elizabethjstringer84@gmail.com
• Instagram: @surgeon_hands
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/elizabeth.stringer.902

Image Credit:
Image of me wearing artwork by artists Debby and Larry Kline. Photo by Larry Kline.

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