Sophie Eisner

Lives and works in Detroit, MI

Artist statement

I make sculptures, drawings and installation. Borrowing from the language of architecture and design, I reimagine common shapes in various colors, materials, shifts in orientation, and scale. By blending the familiar and the strange with references to utilitarian objects and human gestures, I explore relationships between the physical world, emotion, memory and the body. Sensitivity to materials, mark making, mass, and weight grounds the work in physical experience, while also suggesting, even reveling in, its own lack of fixedness. My work is not autobiographical, but it is personal. I draw inspiration from details of the house where I grew up for such as the bathroom tiles, the color of a quilt, or the proportions of the kitchen sink. Tethering my work to my own experiences helps me connect with others. Even though our stories are different, the emotions resonate. Rather than illustrating a narrative, I want to communicate a feeling, or, as is often the case with memory, many feelings mixed together.

Artwork