Artist Statement

Since 2001, I have been making large-scale sculptural installations consisting of fabric, pipe cleaners, wire, string, plastic, thread and fishing weights that have been shown in gallery and museum settings, outdoor spaces, and most recently, in the six-story stairway of a building. The installations are drawings-in-space that cover, divide, encircle, and fill the spaces in which they are situated. My work involves both the slow, plodding movement of patching and sewing pieces of cloth and plastic to linear structures made of pipe cleaners, as well as quicker, more gestural actions that connect all of the parts into systems, making large suspended sculptures. Over the years, they have taken various forms: parasitic-like growths that cover interior architectural elements and outdoors structures; hanging tent forms that immerse the viewer; suspended walls that curve and divide spaces; excessive, organic masses that transform rooms into caves. I often see my work as being in flux and replicating various states of proliferating growth.

Often my installation work has focused on rhizomatic structures. Previous room-sized pieces have been inspired by marine and plant biology, as well as architectural and urban models. While the forms that make up my work suggest systems or structures, they are also meant to somehow reflect time and my own hand in the work.

Selected Works

In  1989,  Lathan-Stiefel  earned  a  bachelor’s  degree  in  visual  arts  from  Brown  University in  Providence, Rhode Island, and returned to Atlanta  where  she  set up  a  studio  space and  worked  three  part-time  jobs.  She  married  a  musician  and  composer,  Van  Stiefel, and  they  moved  to  Princeton,  New  Jersey,  so  he  could get  his  PhD.  She  received an MFA  from  Portland’s  Maine  Collage  of  Art  in  2001.  She  now  lives  and  works  in  Kennett Square,  Pennsylvania,  where  she  also teaches  art  classes  twice  a  week  at the  school her  two  children  attend.  

Her  work  has  been  exhibited  across  the  country,  including  at  Diana  Lowenste in  Fine  Arts  in  Miami,  Florida;  the  Contemporary  in  Baltimore,  Maryland;  Tiger  Strikes  Astroid and  the  Philadelphia  Art  Alliance  in  Philadelphia,  Pennsylvania;  the  Delaware  Center  for  the  Contemporary  Arts  in  Wilmington;  Suyama  Space  in  Seattle,  Washington;  Galerie  Articule  in  Montreal,  Quebec;  and  the  Atlanta  Contemporary  Art  Center  and  Sandler  Hudson  Gallery  in  Atlanta,  Georgia. Lathan-Stiefel is represented by Galleri Urbane.