Convergence: Health & Creativity

New Work by Anne Labovitz

November 16, 2024 - April 13, 2025

William and Anna Jane Schlossman Gallery

Taking inspiration from a holistic nature of human experience, Convergence: Health & Creativity – New Work by Anne Labovitz is a body of work by noted international and Minnesota-based artist Anne Labovitz. The exhibition includes sculpture, installation, drawing, and public participatory works created specifically for the Plains Art Museum. These artworks are an examination and experimentation with light and color, and are underpinned by the concept of connecting health and creativity. Each work reflects extensive research and interviews with health care professionals and is manifested through the materiality, intense mark-making, abstracted text, and precise and intuitive color selection.

The interconnection of health and art provides space for creativity and the opportunity for us to consider ideas of wellness and emotive responses. The artist assembled the exhibition to be an active place for creativity, contemplation and conversation. Light, words, voices and text become mediums in the work.

This exhibition created specifically for the Plains Art Museum, will be informed by interviews with local healthcare professionals and organizations as well as creative research into the synthesis of Creativity and health. The presentation will include a solo exhibition of sculptures, drawings and public participation as well as an Plains Art Museum atrium installation.

Labovitz has previously undertaken extensive research in the connection between health and art, which manifested in her 2023 exhibition The Nexus of Well-Being and Art at Rochester Art Center. Interviews with healthcare professionals directly informed the exhibition. Labovitz’s previous project 122 Conversations: Person to Person: Art Beyond Borders addressed ideas of cross-cultural connections and co-creating through 60 one-on-one interviews, which toured to six countries and is currently on view at the Minneapolis-St Paul International airport.

Labovitz received a BA in Art and Psychology from Hamline University in St. Paul (1989) and an MFA from Transart, Plymouth University, UK (2017). She is currently an adjunct professor and mentor in the MFA program at Minneapolis College of Art and Design. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and is held in many private and public collections, including the Walker Art Center, Weisman Museum in Minneapolis and Mayo Clinic.

left to right: 122 Conversations: Person to Person, Art Beyond Borders, Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport installation Terminal 2, 2020 • Embracing Well-Being, 2023, 180 x 180 x 36 in., Acrylic on Tyvek

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