The artist Ingrid Erickson in front of Into the Blue, an installation created in 2024.
Ingrid Erickson: Artist Statement
June 2024
For nearly twenty years, my art has fused art + science, research + studio practice, drawing + sculpture. From hundreds of intimately-scaled cut paper objects – based on observation and research, and created using an X-acto knife and scissors – I create large-scale installations that highlight the fragility of ecosystems. I am a mourner and documenter of lost and declining species; a taxonomist, a researcher, and a cataloger of environmental concerns. I believe that art can be a catalyst for change at both individual and societal levels.
I frequently collaborate with scientists. As part of a team at the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center, I helped to raise endangered whooping crane chicks. I work from life as well as from natural history collections utilizing specimens, radiographs and my own photographs and videos, sketches and drawing. Community partners for my research have included the natural history collections at The Field Museum, Chicago; North Carolina State Museum of Natural Sciences, Raleigh; the Carolina Raptor Center, Duke University; and the International Crane Foundation, Baraboo, Wisconsin.
International artist residencies at Nes in Skagastrond, Iceland and Fiskars AIR in Rasepoori, Finland have offered me extended time to practice slow looking, sketching, photography, writing and research. Residencies in the United States have included Jentel (Wyoming), Sitka Center for Art & Ecology (Oregon), Surel’s Place (Idaho), and Penland School of Crafts.
Based now in North Carolina, I was raised in New England, and have lived in the Western United States, as well in China and Thailand. I hold studio art and art history degrees from Middlebury College. I earned a K-12 Studio Art Certification from Maine College of Art, Portland.