Contemporary artist Alice Aycock was born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and is based in New York, New York. She studied at Douglass College in New Brunswick, New Jersey, graduating with a bachelor of arts degree in 1968. She then went to New York City where she earned her masters at Hunter College. At Hunter, Aycock studied in the late 1960s under minimalist pioneer Robert Morris, and soon thereafter began working on large-scale sculptures in wood and stone. Aycock has been a member of the New York City Design Commission since 2003 and she has also been appointed to the GSA’s National Register of Peer Professionals. She received the Americans for the Arts Public Art Award in 2008 for “Ghost Ballet for the East Bank Machineworks” in Nashville, Tennessee. She has taught at numerous colleges and universities including Yale University (1988-92) and as the Director of Graduate Sculpture Studies (1991-92). She has taught at the School of Visual Arts since 1991.

Overview

In the 1980s, she began using steel and produced massive installations that challenged ideas of industrial aesthetics. In 2014 she made headlines for “Paper Chase,” her series of monumental, “ribbon-esque” pieces along Park Avenue in Manhattan. Her steel works often appear to have transcended the laws of gravity, floating like tops above the otherwise-mundane grounds of public spaces and institutions.

Alice Aycock has exhibited in major art museums internationally. Her artworks are in permanent collections of Museum of Modern Art, NY, Whitney Museum of American Art, Brooklyn Museum,the Louis Vuitton Foundation, LA County Museum, and National Gallery, Washington, DC. She exhibited at the Venice Biennale, Documenta VI and VIII in Kassel, Germany and the Whitney Biennial.

Her public art projects are throughout the United States: Philadelphia International Airport; Police Headquarters in Dallas, TX; Kansas City International Airport, Missouri; and Washingt