Cecile Johnson Soliz
b. 1957, Landstuhl, Germany
Lives and works in Cardiff
Cecile Johnson Soliz, Balls 2018
Cecile Johnson Soliz is a sculptor. She regularly involves a range of skilled people in the development and production of her work, often from manufacturing environments. This enables her to make different kinds of objects that may transcend art, design or craft categories.
Working with different kinds of people who have developed thinking and skills gives me a perspective from which to think about my studio work. I am intrigued by what happens when function, reproduction and public spaces come into art. I am curious about why there are so many objects needed that do not yet exist. While I consider myself to be a studio-based artist, all of these other kinds of objects I’ve made have a direct relation to the studio work: clothing to be worn in the studio, flexible furniture to use in a studio or museum to make and view art, vessels to drink from in the space between being awake and asleep (contemplating, reviewing the day time, entering dream time or sitting back and contemplating work in the making), sculptural chimney pots that link the interior home space to the city space outside. The relationship between studio work and project feels natural to me. The different ways of making and thinking about objects is fascinating, depending on who one is with, where, and who the objects are for.
Cecile Johnson Soliz was born in Germany and grew up in Merced in the San Joaquin Valley in California, USA. She also lived in Mexico, Bolivia, Brazil, Italy and Ghana before moving to Cardiff in 1975 to study on the Foundation course for one year at Cardiff College of Art. She later studied at Goldsmiths’ College, London, returning to Cardiff as the Henry Moore Fellow in Sculpture at Cardiff School of Art & Design (1995-1997). In 2017 she won the Gold Medal in Fine Art at the National Eisteddfod, Wales and in 2018, The Oriel Davies Open Award. She is currently working towards a one-person exhibition at the Oriel Davies Gallery in June 2019.
The artist was in the following exhibition:
Everything.
All At Once.
At The Same Time.
