Teresa Tolliver

Feb 3

Teresa Tolliver (b. 1945, Los Angeles, CA) has worked in diverse mediums, including ceramics and painting, throughout her more than four-decade-long career, exhibiting with Brockman Gallery, Los Angeles early in her practice. Through the technique of assemblage, Tolliver draws on histories of the Black diaspora in Los Angeles, especially South Central Los Angeles, where the artist was born and where she still resides.

Utilizing found objects that emerge from her everyday life, as well as craft materials, mass-produced items, and elements she picks up at swap meets, Tolliver creates figurative sculptures that range in size from hand-held, doll-like figures to wall works to life-size freestanding figures. The artist’s works evidence her ability to transform the familiar into something fantastical as well as the expansive visual possibilities of working serially. Tolliver’s sculptures are a testament to the creative and formal freedom contained within the act of making, and to the act of making as a value in and of itself, and as a wellspring of life.

Tolliver received her BFA from California State University, Northridge (Los Angeles, CA) in 1971. She apprenticed with ceramicist Michael Frimkess from 1983-1984. Tolliver has been an arts educator for more than thirty-five years at institutions throughout Los Angeles including the California African American Museum and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. She was the 2023 Paula and Edwin Sidman Fellow in the Arts at the University of Michigan.

Tolliver’s work has been most recently exhibited Teresa Tolliver: Sitting on the Edge of Reality at parrasch heijnen (Los Angeles, CA), the Hammer Museum (Los Angeles, CA) where she was recently featured in the museum’s biennial Made in L.A. 2023: Acts of Living; the Institute for the Humanities Gallery at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, MI); the California African American Museum (Los Angeles, CA); Watts Towers Art Center (Los Angeles, CA); and the Skirball Cultural Center (Los Angeles, CA), among other institutions and galleries. She is a recipient of awards and grants from the California Arts Council (1988, 1991, 1993), the National Endowment for the Arts (1988), and the cities of Los Angeles (2017, 2006, 2005, 2002, 2001, 1992, 1989) and Pasadena (1997). Teresa Tolliver is represented by parrasch heijnen, Los Angeles.

Select Works