Elizabeth Spotswood Alexander Spencer at Carolina Creations

We are honored to be representing Elizabeth Spencer at Carolina Creations. Elizabeth is a full time instructor of Art at Craven Community College.

She holds a Master of Fine Arts in Artisanry from the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, Dartmouth MA  and a Bachelors of Fine Art from Murray State University, Murray, KY. Woodworking, Functional Design.

She has taught and lectured at Northland Polytechnic, Whangarei, NZ, The Farm Foundation, Middlebrook VA, Central Piedmont Community College, Charlotte, NC, Arrowmont School of Art and Craft, Gatlinburg TN,  Kendall College of Art, Grand Rapids, MI, Penland School of Arts and Craft,  Haystack Mountain School of Arts and Crafts, and the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth, Teacher of Record, Dartmouth, MA.

Her artists statement:

As a little girl I was a smooth, freckled face amongst a sea of wrinkles, a rapt expression enchanted by stories, legend and lore.  A soft breeze of voices whispering in my ears as the tribe of women who raised me told me where I came from.  Held tight with fingers crooked by age interlaced around my belly, my grandmother would tell me the tale of the Grey Man. And then the crooked fingers would shift from pale to dark and there I would sit on Josephine’s lap listening to the story of the bastard from Tangier.  Through
the rotating and sure touch of the women who raised me, I was given elaborate maps of stories to guide me, to illustrate where fact meets fiction, shadow becomes light, and where the most tender parts that entice and tangle the human condition are eventually exposed.

The stories of my childhood told me of joy, reassured me of disappointment, and gently explained that love and pain are never far from one another.  They left me with a permanent ache of what I have no other word than “homesickness” to describe.  And as I listened to these same stories told over and over again, I began to learn that these stories, while unique only to a small part of the world, spoke of experienced lessons.  They have become a type of collective experience that allows me to navigate through reality and develop a greater sense of identity.

I am always captivated by the idea of a surreal experience within the bounds of reality.  It is not faith that is important, but encouragement that a person, a place, and a time have an element of magic and mysticism that can be revealed on an individual and intimate level. Using stories and contemporary experiences, imbedded between the surfaces of the human condition, I am able to mold the world into a reflection of what is absolute and what is wished for.  I am always seeking for ways to make this union tangible through an instinctive mixture of concept, form, and materials.

My work reflects heavily layered, magical and surreal moments incrusted with shards of nobility, where fact has little supremacy. Thus I often find myself in a rich and superstitious dream world where what I remember, what I want, and who I am dramatically collide.  I take these collisions and create both functional and non-functional wooden and mixed media sculptures that construct a fantastical reverie.