Eliza Au is originally from Vancouver, B.C. in Canada. She received her BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and her MFA from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University. Au is currently an Assistant Professor of Ceramics at the University of North Texas.
Eliza Au create forms that act as lines in space and patterns which mirror and replicate each other, seemingly in a dance of artificial mitosis. Working digitally in CAD (computer aided design) affects how I create and view artwork. The liminal space between complexity and order allows room for play and discovery through the rules of algorithms and parametric design. The digital interface has its own inherent surfaces and textures such as the wireframe, pixels and meshes which we experience visually. The planning and production process work in sync with each other, through line drawings in CAD which are engraved in wood and eventually cast in clay. I am interested in bringing the wireframe surface into the physical world through the processes of craft, such as plaster mold making and press molding clay.
Her work investigates how past and present ornament in architecture engages in the idea of sacred space. Ornament and abstraction have a close relationship, ornament acting as visual stimuli and also as a vehicle for social norms and ideals. Historically, architectural ornament within the Islamic mosque drew a connection between infinite repetition and ideas of divinity; in contemporary architecture such as in the work of Mark Foster Gage and Evan Douglis, the fluid line, complexity and ornamentation have re-emerged, without explicit religious ideas, but utopic ideals about society.
