Artist Statement
A Chicago-based, contemporary artist, I’ve worked with a variety of media across the visual art spectrum for over 30 years.
Currently, I’m compelled to work with the found objects I’ve hoarded for many years. Materials rich with history, such as old fabric and leather, rusted or tarnished metals, and other remnants forgotten by time or worn out by nature. With so many of these objects having lost their original aesthetic, I become obsessed with the need to find new shape interactions, textures and colors that work together to create a new conceptual work of art.
Artist Bio
British born artist Michele Stutts has utilized painting, drawings, collage, assemblage, installations, and video as her media of choice for the last three decades. Her unique bodies of work are often related to socio- political ethics, mental health, beauty and sexuality.
Since 1990, Stutts has taught at the American Academy of Art College and been a local member of ARC Gallery & Educational Foundation. Currently, she continues to showcase her work nationally and internationally.
She works predominately with found objects discovered in her Humboldt Park neighborhood on Chicago’s northwest side. Once gathered, her growing collection of “treasures” get deconstructed, then reconstructed into powerful pieces of art. More often than not, these objects take on an entirely new life in Stutts’s work, as she intrinsically weaves them into settings and ideas they weren’t originally created for.