Liz Whalen (b. 1994), works primarily with wool, employing felting, painting, and sculptural techniques to transform the material beyond its traditional use. Her practice challenges the boundaries of wool as a medium, often rendering it unrecognizable.
Her work moves between extremes: some pieces are thick and dense, embedded with objects and layered with pigment, while others are stretched to near transparency, testing the limits of the material’s structure and resilience.
More recently, Liz has incorporated wool and silk into collage-based works that explore ideas of layering, preservation, and temporality. These compositions evoke a physical parallel to digital processes, capturing materials in fleeting, suspended moments. Through this ongoing investigation, her practice continues to question and expand the possibilities of wool.
Drawing from her grandmother’s collections of linens and domestic objects, Liz reconfigures familiar motifs into altered, often otherworldly forms. Materials such as costume jewelry and textiles are embedded, allowing for new spatial and material relationships to emerge.
Through processes of manipulation and deformation, her work reflects on histories of women’s labor, reframing them within a contemporary context while continuing to expand the expressive and structural possibilities of felt.
Artist Bio
Liz received her M.F.A. from Washington University in St. Louis and her B.F.A. from the University of Kentucky. In 2018, she was featured in New American Paintings (Issue #136) as one of 40 emerging artists in the South, and in ArtMaze Magazine (London, U.K.). She was awarded the Arthur Oswald Scholarship and the Sam Fox School Travel Grant in 2019, supporting research in Germany and Mexico focused on natural fiber dye techniques and contemporary color theory.
CV 2026
EDUCATION
Master of Fine Arts, Washington University in St. Louis, Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, St. Louis, MO, 2020
Bachelor of Fine Arts with a minor in Art History, University of Kentucky, College of Fine Arts, Lexington, KY , 2018
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
AFTERGLOW, University of Kentucky Bolivar Gallery, Lexington, KY 2025
Summer Invitational Group Show, Swan Coach House Gallery, Atlanta, GA 2025
&yet: Group Show, Dalton Gallery at Agnes Scott College, Atlanta, GA, 2024
LOT 49 Auction, The Luminary, St. Louis, MO, 2023
To Go Back and Forth: Solo Exhibition, Monaco Gallery, St. Louis, MO, 2023
Jumbo Shrimp: Group show, T ake It Easy Gallery, Atlanta, GA, 2022
Postcard Pin Up, Mint Gallery, Atlanta, GA, 2022
By Means Of: Solo Exhibition, Re.riddle Gallery, San Francisco, CA, 2021
Intersect Chicago (SOFA) with Re.riddle gallery, Chicago, IL, 2020
T actile Connections, Ghost Art Projects, Omaha, NB, 2020
Miami University of Ohio Young Painters Competition, Hiestand Galleries, College of Creative Arts, Oxford, OH, 2020
Envelop: presented in partnership with Innovations in T extiles Fiber Biennial, St. Louis Community College, Florissant Valley, MO, 2019
64 Arts National Juried Exhibition, Buchanan Center for the Arts Gallery, Monmouth, IL, 2018
Color: Primary to T ertiary, Site:Brooklyn Gallery, Brooklyn, NY , 2017
RESIDENCIES
2025 Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, VM
2023 Ox-Bow: Conversations in Practice, Saugatuck, MI (Remote)
2021 World of Co Artist Residency, Sofia, Bulgaria (Remote)
2019 Arquetopia International Artist Residency, Oaxaca, Mexico
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Burnaway Magazine, Curated by Elizabeth Withers, Atlanta, GA, 2024
“Women’s Work”, Curated by Angelik Vizcarrondo-Laboy, Smith Street Books, Melbourne, AUS, 2024
New American Paintings, No. 136, Southern Issue, 2018
ArtMaze Magazine, Spring Edition: Curatorial Selection, London, United Kingdom, 2018
Student Contributor, Pushing the Envelope: Mail Art from the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art