Eliza Dennis

I find so much beauty in the space between weight and weightlessness. This is why I gravitate towards materials that have anethereal quality to them, and why I love to create sculptures that seem to fall from the ceiling or away from a wall. I love playing around with the possibilities of floating weighty objects, or giving weight to light and airy materials. I find this beautiful about the human form as well. The composite structure of our bodies enables us to switch quickly between buoyant and heavy movements. If we understand our anatomy well enough, we can isolate and activate our internal systems and make what is inherently heavy, weightless. It is these internal structures I am trying to understand in my work. All of my pieces are created in an obsessive and iterative fashion with each individual object acting as a raw material for the systems I have designed. I find the weight of hanging sculptures to resemble the figure’s natural state of suspension. While the organs and viscera of the body are contained, they are, for the most part, suspended vertically. And don’t we spend our whole lives fighting against gravity—to walk, to remain young, to combat bodily deterioration?
Eliza Dennis grew up in Newton, Massachusetts. She received her BA in Studio Art from Carleton College in 2013 and currently lives in San Francisco, CA.