Born in 1967, in Los Angeles, California, Nina Levy attended Yale and graduated with a Bachelor's degree in English and art in 1989. She then received an M.F.A. from the University of Chicago in 1993. She currently resides in Brooklyn, New York with her husband and young son. Her work has been exhibited in multiple galleries all over the nation. She mainly works with hyper realistic figurative sculptors from observation, but distorts, scales, and displaces various elements. She works with clay or plaster to create her sculptures, which are then cast in resin or hydrocal, and finally painted with oil or automotive paints.
Similar to Nick Cave, I was drawn to the whimsical nature of Nina Levy's sculptures. By manipulating the scale, placement and context of various figurative elements, she delves into the psychology and identity of an individual, and highlights social context and issues in her work. All her sculptures and photographs are visually engaging, due to its playful and realistic nature, but elicits some sense of discomfort due to the manipulated elements. There is a sense of wonder in her work, of Alice in Wonderland nature, and it starts a dialogue for issues from loss to identity to parenthood in a fresh and intelligent manner.
If Nina were in our class, I think she would play with distorting the proportion, such as photographing the bust over somebody's body by holding it closer to the camera (such as when tourists pretend they're holding up the leaning tower of Pisa). She might also create a second "layer" such as a over-or-undersized body part to accompany the bust.
Similar to Nick Cave, I was drawn to the whimsical nature of Nina Levy's sculptures. By manipulating the scale, placement and context of various figurative elements, she delves into the psychology and identity of an individual, and highlights social context and issues in her work. All her sculptures and photographs are visually engaging, due to its playful and realistic nature, but elicits some sense of discomfort due to the manipulated elements. There is a sense of wonder in her work, of Alice in Wonderland nature, and it starts a dialogue for issues from loss to identity to parenthood in a fresh and intelligent manner.
If Nina were in our class, I think she would play with distorting the proportion, such as photographing the bust over somebody's body by holding it closer to the camera (such as when tourists pretend they're holding up the leaning tower of Pisa). She might also create a second "layer" such as a over-or-undersized body part to accompany the bust.