Artist's Statement
This body of work comes directly from my time working as an early childhood educator. In the classroom, learning happens through the body through lifting, dragging, stacking, tearing, pressing, and repeating. Children think with their hands. They learn by encountering materials with weight, resistance, and possibility.
The work in this exhibition is material-forward and floor-based, drawing from the kinds of objects, structures, and arrangements found in early learning environments. Paper clay, loose parts, and large-scale forms function as both sculptures and invitations. They are meant to be touched, moved, and used. Loose parts are simple materials that children use in many ways, supporting learning through play, movement, and making.
Much of this work is inspired by the forms and logics of children’s making — provisional, repetitive, responsive, and unconcerned with finish. Rather than treating play as preparation for something else, this work treats it as a form of thinking in itself.
By placing this exhibition in a children’s library and creating work that children can physically engage with, I am interested in honoring early childhood learning as complex, meaningful, and deserving of public space. The work asks what it looks like to take children’s ways of knowing seriously, and what we might build if we did.
Artist's Bio
Alise Anderson, originally from Houston, TX, is an artist and educator living in Salt Lake City, UT. She received her Bachelors in Fine Arts from San Francisco Art Institute with a focus on New Genres and Sculpture. She received the outstanding student award in both the New Genres department and the Sculpture department. She has exhibited in venues both locally and nationally. Her work was selected to be a part of the White Columns Artist Registry. Since 2016 she has participated in the following artist residencies: CalArts in Los Angeles, CA; San Jose Museum of Textiles in San Jose, CA; Recology in San Francisco, CA and Utah Museum of Contemporary Art in Salt Lake City, UT, and Uncommon in Jackson Hole, WY. Anderson’s work has been published in Southwest Contemporary Magazine, San Francisco Chronicle, and Kole Magazine. Her work was published into a book titled “My Grandma Is a Meme” published by UMOCA press. It included the exhibition as well as related archives and both an essay and interview from the director and curator of the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art. Most recently she had a show at Finch Lane Gallery in Salt Lake City, UT. She was accepted into the 2025 Canopy program with NY Crit Club and most recently selected as a resident for Queer Spectra for 2026. Anderson has forthcoming shows this Winter and Spring in and around Salt Lake City, UT.
