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, creating installations of visual optimism. Each work reflects extensive research and interviews with health care professionals from the Fargo, West Fargo, Moorhead area. Labovitz’s process 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.
The artworks are infused with words spoken by interviewees. This approach requires attentive and meditative concentration on and with the subject. Whole body listening, or what Labovitz calls Relational Listening, is a creative practice, rooted in the idea that it is a basic human need to be heard and feel seen. This process fosters a dynamic of emotional intimacy that is both provocative and visceral. The interconnection of health and art provided space for creativity and allowed Labovitz to consider ideas about wellness and how the audience might respond emotively to art and each other. Keywords gleaned from the research and interviews include connection, community, hope, love, and rest. These words can be found embedded in the artworks.
In what has become a signature element of many of Labovitz’s exhibitions, visitors will be offered an opportunity to participate and contribute to the content of the exhibit. The participatory Well-Being Wall II invites visitors to create their own artwork and exhibit it on the large grid wall.
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. In addition to her solo exhibition, Labovitz large-scale, site-specific installation in the Ruth and Seymour Landfield Atrium will be unveiled.
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.
