Beverly Semmes

Life Datesb. 1958

Beverly Semmes (born 1958) is an American artist based in New York City who works in sculpture, textile, video, photography, performance, and large-scale installation. She studied at the Boston Museum School, Tufts University, and at the Yale University School of Art. During her graduate studies she experimented with heavy wire sculptures and with artificial objects rendered as natural ones, such as trees made of steel with painted-on leaves, which she ultimately placed in natural settings. Semmes is now best known for her large-scale sculpture and installations, which often explore the relationship between craft and fine art while simultaneously dealing with issues related to feminism, gender roles and womanhood. She explores this in many different ways, notably with her textile work, as textiles are traditionally associated with women and women's work. Her oversized dresses are dysfunctional in scale and composition, emphasizing the absence of the body. Semmes has stated that these pieces have a theatrical, performative quality and that she uses clothing as a means to explore its power and influence on the internal and external. Her ceramic works, often juxtaposed with her fabric installations, tend to be roughly shaped vessels in bright fluorescent shades, while her crystal works defy our expectations of the medium and serve as a metaphor for the female body.