Lindley and Viviano
Artist bio Sarah Lindley and Norwood Viviano have been based in Southwest Michigan since 2001, where they are sculpture professors at Kalamazoo College and Grand Valley State University respectively. Lindley’s previous work focused on the domestic environment, but more recently has responded to the abandoned mills along the Kalamazoo River. Her work has been widely exhibited throughout the United States and at the Magnelli Museum in France and the Clayarch Gimhae Museum in South Korea. Viviano’s recent work focuses on the link between the departure of industry and population shift in major cities. He has had solo exhibitions in Seattle, New York and Cleveland in addition to numerous group exhibitions in the United States and Europe. In 2010, they worked as a collaborative team during a twelve-week Arts-Industry Residency at the Kohler Company in Wisconsin. The installation on display in “Sculpture Today: New Forces, New Forms”, is the result of that collaboration.

Lindley and Viviano

Artist bio

Sarah Lindley and Norwood Viviano have been based in Southwest Michigan since 2001, where they are sculpture professors at Kalamazoo College and Grand Valley State University respectively. Lindley’s previous work focused on the domestic environment, but more recently has responded to the abandoned mills along the Kalamazoo River. Her work has been widely exhibited throughout the United States and at the Magnelli Museum in France and the Clayarch Gimhae Museum in South Korea. Viviano’s recent work focuses on the link between the departure of industry and population shift in major cities. He has had solo exhibitions in Seattle, New York and Cleveland in addition to numerous group exhibitions in the United States and Europe. In 2010, they worked as a collaborative team during a twelve-week Arts-Industry Residency at the Kohler Company in Wisconsin. The installation on display in “Sculpture Today: New Forces, New Forms”, is the result of that collaboration.

About the work
Title: Kohler Pile
Art form: 3-D
Medium: Ceramic and glass
Year created: 2011
Description of work: We created the “Kohler Pile”, a large floor installation comprised of over 75 glossy black toilet tank lids with miniature glass models of the original Kohler Factory Plant during an Arts-Industry residency in the same factory in 2010. As Artists-in-Residence we created our own work alongside factory associates utilizing the same technologies and processes that they were using to create Kohler bathroom fixtures. The resulting image represents our interest in the dynamic relationship between early American industry and the towns that grew up around it. This focus in our work– the domestic landscape– is a direct result of our experience living in a small Michigan town that lost its primary employer in 2000 and was registered as a superfund site within the same decade. Our approach considers the tension between historical modes of manufacturing and contemporary notions of efficiency and industry’s influence on the individual and collective narratives in the surrounding communities.

Lindley and Viviano

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