Web: https://www.lindaerzinger.com

Bio:

Linda Erzinger holds a Bachelor Degree in Illustration from the Savannah College of Art and Design as well as a Masters in Expressive Therapies from U of L. Years of work as an Art Therapist reflect in her connection with community involved processes.
Erzinger’s previous work in construction and theater lay the foundation for creating installations and assemblages.

Erzinger has earned top prizes in many group shows, most notably a Merit award from the Huntsville Art Museum biannual Red Clay Survey. Solo shows include Spalding University, Billy Hertz Gallery, Swanson Contemporary and the Art Sanctuary. In 2018, she participated in The Art of Goodwill residency program. As the current president of the ENID: Generations of Women Sculptors group, she advocates for the advancement of women in the arts. Erzinger recently represented Kentucky in the national Her Flag
project.

Artist Statement:

I make things from what the world has finished with. Shipping straps, industrial plastic, salvaged fabric: discarded materials that carry the fingerprints of consumer culture and environmental consequence. Reshaping them by hand is itself an act of argument: that what is overlooked holds value, that transformation is always possible.

My work is rooted in social sculpture, the belief that art is not complete until a community moves through it, witnesses it, adds to it, or claims it as its own. Central to that belief is being witnessed. Healing, in my experience as an art therapist, rarely happens in isolation. It happens in the presence of others, through touch, story, and the lowered guard that play makes possible. To be seen inside a shared space is its own form of medicine.

My own body has been a teacher: through illness, through transition, through the particular experience of moving through the world as a pansexual woman. That education shows up in my work as a persistent tenderness toward lives that don’t fit neatly, and a commitment to making space where many kinds of belonging are possible. Transformation is not a method. It is the point.