KRENSKY, BETH

Statement
I am a gatherer of things—objects, words, spirit—and a connector of fragments, to make us whole.

My work responds to the natural or built environment while providing a refuge—a space within a space—for participants and viewers. My pieces both reference and are relics from real or imagined rituals. I create objects and performative gestures as a contemplative act. Often the objects I perform are cobbled together from domestic items. I do this, in particular, to reference the work and keepsakes of the everyday. I continue to explore ways that art (both the process of creating art as well as the finished product) can transcend the political for the human. Much of the work is intended to be portable and able to cross boundaries as a metaphor for movement within and across the multiple layers of shared or contested existence over time and place.

My practice is broad and combines a material studio practice with social or environmental issues. It is conceptually rooted in a socio-historical memory of place. I use art as a tool for highlighting and creating human experiences that are both shared and unique. I see the relationship between artists and the public sphere as inextricably linked. The arts offer the possibility of transformation on both an individual and societal level by opening up a free space where anything is possible. It is this free space or possible world that allows people to name themselves, envision a different reality, and engage in the re-making of their world.

Biography
Beth Krensky is an artist, activist and educator. She is a professor of art teaching at the University of Utah. She received her formal art training from Tufts University/School of the Museum of Fine Arts and MIT’s Center for Advanced Visual Studies. She has exhibited widely throughout the United States and internationally. Her work is intended to provoke reflection about what is happening in our world as well as to create a vision of what is possible. She was recently selected as one of Utah’s 15 most influential artists by 15Bytes.

She is also a scholar in the area of youth-created art and social change. She holds an M.Ed. from Harvard Graduate School of Education and a Ph.D. in Educational Foundations from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Her writing addresses community-based art education; youth activist art and art for social change. She has received multiple teaching and research awards, including the University of Utah’s Distinguished Teaching Award, Public Service Professorship and Presidential Scholar Award.

Beth is a founding member of the Artnauts and joined the collective in 1996.