Elizabeth Rhoads Read graduated from Cornell College with a degree in art and political science. She has spent over 50 years creating, exhibiting and teaching art. Her work has been exhibited and is included in both the U.S. and abroad. A reviewer wrote about Elizabeth’s work, “[it] recalls the late post minimalist artist Eva Hesse in it’s combination of minimalist sensibility with abject items”. She currently lives and works in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
Her work uses simple materials such as paper, discarded fabric and abject items to create organic sculptures. The assemblage of rearranged fragments and their relationships of the parts is her language. Elizabeth’s eye for composition and compulsion for texture invoke the sense of recesses and secret hiding places; spaces that pull one in for shelter. Her pieces create illusive light, interspersed space and speculation beyond the boundaries of the medium. Her philosophy is to immerse herself in textures and tones to express the intensity of human emotions.
Her current work is continually evolving, informed by her experiences and mediums she encounters. To Elizabeth, art is everywhere and if the viewer is open to that profound belief, the simplicity and directness of her materials and techniques are refreshing in this complicated world.