On display in the museum’s main level galleries was a solo exhibition of work by mixed media artist Elizabeth Turk, comprised of new work along with pieces from earlier series. In a multi-media installation, Turk continued her exploration of the recurring themes of time, matter, and space. The exhibition featured marble sculptures from her Cage and Collars series, the fragility and fluidity of which were a stark contrast to the heavy materials from which they are made. It also included X-ray mandala LED illuminated prints, an installation of scholar stones, and a “cabinet of curiosities” consisting of objects and drawings that have played a part in the artist’s imaginative and working processes.

Elizabeth Turk has received a string of notable awards, including the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship and the Barnett and Annalee Newman Foundation Fellowship in 2010, and a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship in 2011. These have allowed her to push her own practice, as well as the medium of marble, in new directions and to new heights.

Born in Pasadena and raised in Orange County, Turk has had a distinguished career internationally and bi-coastally. Her work resides in numerous prestigious collections, including the Corcoran Gallery of Art and the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.; the Weatherspoon Gallery, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, NC; The Mint Museum, Charlotte, NC; and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. She is represented by Hirschl & Adler Modern in New York and Scape in Corona del Mar.

This exhibition complemented the museum’s second annual Art & Nature initiative, a multidisciplinary exploration of art’s many and various engagements with the natural world. Support for Art & Nature was generously funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Orange County Community Foundation, the Massen Greene Foundation, the Laguna Beach Community Foundation, the Draper Family Foundation Fund, the McBeth Foundation, Yasuko and John Bush, Jane and Joe Hanauer, Chris Quilter, Laura and Louis Rohl, Scape: Southern California Art Projects and Exhibitions, the Nellie Leaman Taft Foundation, LocalArts.com Magazine, Laurie and Bart Brown, Judy and John Whiting, Douglas Campbell, and anonymous donors.