Anna Collette and Jessica Lund-Higgins

Foraged, April 2017

This April, Grizzly Grizzly is proud to present Foraged, a two-person exhibition that rethinks traditional divides between artist and landscape.  No longer passive observers, Anna Collette and Jessica Lund-Higgins both glean elements from their environment – to different ends.  Anna Collette creates poetic, studio photographs through formal reduction, and Jessica Lund Higgins builds evocative small-scale sculpture influenced by personal memory and consumer culture.

In her photographic series Gathering Ground, Anna Collette examines the wake of seasonal flooding in Central Texas. Travelling to the site months after the event, the artist trespasses, collecting a new series of work that relates to the history of portraiture.  She explains part of the process: “Week after week, I returned with a large 12x15 foot studio backdrop and made singular portraits of the trees and debris, fixating on their hanging limbs and severed sticks.”

Jessica Lund-Higgins makes what she terms ‘tiny sculpture,’ balancing the natural and man-made with the disciplined elegance of ikebana.  Each small piece is a like a koan to found debris; for example, the materials comprising the 3-inch sculpture titled ‘moon-pod’ consist of lichen, twigs, tennis ball, glitter, owl pellet and stuffing.

Artist Bios

Anna Collette received an MFA from the Yale University School of Art in 2003 where she received the George Sakier Memorial Award for Excellence in Photography. She has exhibited widely in the United States with solo exhibitions in Boston, New York, and Austin, TX and is represented by Gallery Kayafas in Boston. Collette’s work is held in many public and private collections, most notably the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, FotoMuseum Antwerp, MIT List Visual Arts Center, and Yale University. Publications include The New York Times, Knack Magazine, and Art Review. Before being appointed Assistant Professor at the University of Texas at Austin in 2013, Collette served as a Visiting Assistant Professor at Massachusetts College of Art and Design.

Jessica Lund-Higgins is a visual artist working primarily in tiny sculpture. In the past thirteen years, she has moved thirteen times (generally eddying in the southern states of Alabama and Tennessee).  The following 5 things influence her work: Anna Karenina, Skins (UK,) her standard poodle (Moses,) mold, and fuss-bucketry.  She earned her M.F.A. from the University of Memphis in 2013 and her B.A. from the University of Alabama in Huntsville in 2009. Lund-Higgins currently lives and works in New Haven, CT.