This work examines the social constructions of idealized beauty and the subjective value of objects. Through multi-layered, sculptural paintings that both reveal and mask what is beneath the surface, the question provoked is: what constitutes beauty and worth?
The use of the nutritionally void marshmallow was an extension of the detritus used in earlier work. The marshmallows, manipulated, ripped, burned or crushed, are embellished with steel, enamel paint and resin. Like all her work from this period, the resin coating captures the energy and experimentation beneath a hard and protective layer, transforming what was once of no value into something shiny, new and often unrecognizable.
Connie Noyes (b.1955, Washington, DC) is an interdisciplinary artist who returns again and again to water as material, metaphor, and conduit for the passage between grief, memory, and renewal. Her practice moves fluidly across disciplines, shaped as much by her training as a death doula and her study of Butoh as by her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her MA in psychology from Notre Dame de Namur University in Belmont, California. This unusual convergence- clinical attention to the psyche, ritual attention to the body, and formal attention to material- gives her work its particular fluency in holding both personal and collective forms of loss.
Noyes is a recipient of the Cabins Haystack Residency Fellowship in Norfolk, CT, as well as two artist grants from the City of Chicago's Department of Cultural Affairs. She has exhibited in cities worldwide, including Paris, Innsbruck, Munich, Dubai, and Bangi. She gained international recognition through her affiliation with Salwa Zeidan Gallery in the UAE, participating in Art Abu Dhabi and Art Bahrain, and was invited to the Biennale Internationale d'Art non-objectif in Pont-de-Claix, Grenoble. In the United States, she worked with sound artist Beth Bradfish and Harvestworks, on Governors Island, New York, for a project titled "Untied|United, and has had solo shows at the Evanston Art Center in Evanston, IL, "we are built in water" and at Wedge Projects in Chicago, IL. "A(mend)ed". Her "Under the Freeway" project was featured during Chicago Artists Month as part of "The City as Studio.” In addition, Noyes has participated in various international residencies, including the TransArt summer program in Berlin, Germany; Arteles in Finland; CAMP in France; ChaNorth in New York; Emaar International Art Symposium in Dubai, UAE; and the Thupelo International Workshop in Cape Town South Africa. Her work is in numerous collections, including The Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, Illinois; The Ekstrom Library of Photographic Archives Special Collections in Louisville, Kentucky; Rhode Island School of Design; and the Greenville County Museum in South Carolina. She lives and works in Chicago.
