Mike Libby
I graduated from RISD with a degree in Sculpture in 1999, and have attended the Vermont Studio Center, been artist-in-residence at the University of Maine at Orono, exhibited through the CMCA in Maine, Peabody Essex Museum, Rutgers University, Philadelphia Museum of Art Craft Shows, Smithsonian and Society of Arts and Crafts in Boston, have shown locally in Maine, regionally in new England, nationally in the US and internationally; at Robot Kingdom in Japan, in the UK, France, Germany, Amsterdam, Sweden, and Australia through horticulturalists and interior designers. I have worked with Neiman Marcus, Hasbro, Anthropologie, and Edmund Scientific, and have made work for book covers for Tachyon Publications, Hachette Publishing, and Chronicle Books. Since 2009 I have created ongoing awards for the Science Fiction Writers of America in addition to being in private and public collections and fulfilling unique commissions. I work and live in Southern Maine.
ARTIST STATEMENT
I think of the work I make as dense short stories—compact and layered, where nuances of character, plot, and setting inform each piece’s structure and theme. Within each piece, I explore off-center relationships between material, culture, structure, autobiography, biology, history, and artifice. I intentionally gather ingredients from public sources—hikes, street debris, flotsam and jetsam—as well as from my own life and studio refuse. I like their immediacy, universality and associations.
Each work demands a rigorous, specific process. Sometimes that means adapting one material or form into another; other times, building entirely from scratch. I believe each work is curious in what it can be—my role is to guide it there, all the better if I must do something new for it to exist.
This often involves inventing distinct methods of fabrication, exploring novel configurations, or pushing familiar materials into juxtaposed arrangements. I’m interested in the tension between the materials of life and the broader forms or subjects they compose. Those relations—between detail and context, substance and suggestion—asks for varied investments of time, research, planning, and care. A simple idea, thoroughly explored, can yield a rich story; inversely, a complex story can distill into a single, potent irony. I like playing the range, orbiting between modes, switching focus while maintaining a connective thread of curiosity and invention.
Lately, my work has taken physical shape as creatures—real, imagined, or somewhere in between—or as semi-fanciful architectural forms and models. Both are evident of a meandering interplay between material, process, form, and display- the things that inform each story. I aim to make work that would satisfy my younger self—my inner child, running quality control.
— Mike Libby
