Erica Hess lives and works in Appleton, Wisconsin. She received her M.F.A at the University of Wisconsin - Madison, where she focused on printmaking, textiles, and sculpture. She is a co-founder of the collective printmaking space, Polka Press.
Erica is interested in the relationship between our emotions and objects; the ways in which people make sense of their inner psychological workings and assign meaning to the objects they surround themselves with. She explores these ideas through textiles and large-scale sculpture made of industrial and every-day materials such as concrete, moving blankets, plywood, and cardboard. Using methods and materials of protection, storage, and transport to communicate, she asks us to consider the passage of time, abandonment, preciousness, loss, and failure. Many of her abstract objects are packed into boxes, padded with foam, wrapped in blankets, asking us to consider which objects are valuable enough to transport and protect? Why? Her sculptures are a physical attempt to understand the mutable, continually changing landscape of our emotions by taking seemingly ordinary and universal aspects of life—memory, daily living—and transforming them into art objects.
Photo by Beth Skogen.
For additional information, email info@ericachess.com or fill out the form below.