A Deep Conversation With Artist Elizabeth Salvia

To learn more about Elizabeth and her work, visit
https://www.elizabethsalvia.com

Elizabeth Salvia was born in St. Louis, Missouri. She grew up drawing, sewing and writing poetry. She also created collages using unconventional media—autumn leaves, wallpaper samples, Sears catalogues, National Geographic magazines, and scrap fabric from clothes her mother made.

She earned her B.F.A from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she made art that examined life in city environments. After twenty-two years in Chicago, she moved to California, where she became involved in habitat research and restoration. Her studies of plant and animal habitats also inform her artmaking.

Elizabeth Salvia creates textile and collage artworks that explore ideas of origin and place. Her works investigate the ways in which we are indelibly shaped and marked by our own histories and environments, as we struggle to understand and control them. Her stories are rooted in deep observation and attention to context, and often play out in locations where human-made and natural environments collide. Archetypes such as the Child, the Wanderer, and the Witness have been powerful tools in her work.

She composes her works as collages, using silks, cottons, and papers. She begins with low-water immersion dyeing, and painting and printing with thickened dyes and paints. She then adds stenciling, embroidery, applique, quilting and beading, to create richly textured artworks.

Elizabeth Salvia has shown work in galleries in the U.S. and internationally. She is a full-time artist living and working in the Central Valley of California.