Lindsay Skvarek
Sculpture
Video & Performace
Fiber & Wareables
Installions
Funcational Objects
About & C/V
Youtube
Bio
Lindsay Skvarek is an interdisciplinary artist currently living in Knoxville Tennessee who creates sculptures out of ceramics, metal, wood and fibers as well as performance/video work.She draws on her lived experience as a trans woman to create brutally honest and raw work about dysphoria, survival, masochism and the mental/physical experience of transitioning. She’s from Michigan and received a BFA in studio art as well as BA in art history from Wayne State University in Detroit and is currently an MFA candidate at the University of Tennessee Knoxville. Lindsay has exhibited at shows throughout the midwest and Tennessee.
Artist Statement
I make art because It keeps me from going insane, It helps me process emotions and feelings, I make things that are impossible to put into words into objects that I can then unpack and explain. I make artwork about myself. Each work of art is an insight into how I move through the world and grapple with/shape my transexualityI make artwork about my madness, my transsexuality, and monstrosity. This work moves between themes of body dysmorphia, gender dysphoria, transition, passing, masochism, addiction, survival, to surgery, and community. Like the interdisciplinary practice my womanhood moves through the personalities and practices of the women I've loved and hated. Combining ceramic, metal, wood, fibers, performance and video, I combine different mediums like I've stitched together the idea of the woman I want to be and what I've done to fashion myself in her image. The bits of personality that have rubbed off on me from all the women that I’ve loved and hated. The feminine mannerisms and movements that I've cherry picked from crushes and strangers. I try to work with scraps and remnants. Supplies gathered from the scrap pile, making do from what i can cobble together from those around me.
I abstract my own body in clay, I make lumpy amorphous blobs about my feelings of body dysphoria of hours spent hating the way I looked in the mirror, the fear of looking like a dude in a dress when I go out in public. Times when I dress in shapeless masses of fabric to hide my body from staring eyes. I make twisting masses of sinew and flesh about the mental and physical changes of HRT, about the feeling of fat shifting, my skin becoming thinner and softer, my emotions and senses becoming more vivid. The imagined feelings of my body shifting and reorganizing itself.
I’ve begun trying to push my scale beyond the human body to create large monstrous figures.too large to ignore, things that draw your eye towards them until you can't help but stare. I think about every time I’ve been flirted with at a gas station, half naked (everyone LOVES to talk about my tattoos), ass half hanging out of my shorts, tits falling out of my shirt. Just to get immediately clocked as trans by voice conditioned by 6 years of cigarettes and 5 minutes of voice training when I politely decline. I love seeing if there's a flip from lust to disgust. I want my sculptures to straddle that line. Flowing bright fabric draped around greasy bent steel. Barbed wire mixed with bright colors and cute decorations. I want my sculptures to feel as if they feel as if they are on the verge of collapse, teetering on the edge of the void. I want to challenge the feeling of constant turmoil that permeates my life. I feel like I'm always fighting to keep my life from falling apart. Everytime I hang a sculpture from a drywall ceiling or a 2x4 clamped to a ledge,I accept (and honestly a small part of my hopes) that I could come back in the morning to it shattered on the floor. I love the sense of danger that brings. I’m afraid of becoming boring and what's more exciting than a car crash?
Recently I’ve begun exploring performance and video work heavily influenced by my bottom surgery and subsequent emergency surgery to stop me from continuing to slowly bleed to death. Inspired by amature porn and snuff films. I torture myself through physical referacing transition related medical experiences, blood draws, hrt injections, a year and a half of presurgical laser and electrolysis hair removal as well as fucking with coping mechanisms /crippling nictine addiction by repeatedly putting myself through nicotine withdrawl.
C/V
Born in Michigan
Lives and Works in Knoxville, TN
Education
2024-2027 MFA Candidate, Ceramics, University of Tennessee Knoxville, Knoxville, TN
2017-2021 BFA, Ceramics, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI
BA, Art History, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI
Shows
2025 Following the Pattern, Group Exhibition, Gallery 1010, Knoxville, TN
Thoughts on the Feeling of Flesh, Solo Exhibition, Gallery 1010, Knoxville, TN
Defenestrated Dreams, Group Exhibition, Able Trade, Knoxville, TN
2024 LGBTQ+ Artists in Michigan, Group Exhibition, Lansing Art Gallery, Lansing, MI
A Night at The Orfelia, Immersive Art Installation, Burt’s Warehouse, Detroit, MI
Yard Art Show, Group Exhibition, Ceramics School, Hamtramck, Mi
Art of Bas Blue, Group Exhibition, BasBlue, Detroit, MI
Germination, Group Exhibition, UT Downtown Gallery, Knoxville, TN
Environment + Microclimates, Group Exhibition, Boyer Campbell Bldg, Detroit, Mi
Fragile, Group Show, Dogwood Arts, Knoxville, TN
Thing Theory, Group Exhibition, Tri-Star Arts, Knoxville, TN,
Bonds through Fire, Group Exhibition, Gallery 1010, Knoxville, TN
2023 Messsy at the Orfelia, Group Exhibition, Menjo’s Complex, Detroit, MI
2022 First Rodeo, Group exhibition, Office Space Gallery, Ferndale, MI
Awakening, Group exhibition, Wayne State Art Department Gallery, Detroit, MI
Are you Surprised?, Solo Exhibition, Talking Dolls, Detroit, MI
Have you Seen Me?, Group Exhibition, Spread Art, Detroit, MI
All About the Benjamins, Group exhibition, Public Pool, Hamtramck, MI
2021 For my Ego, Two person exhibition, The Glastonbury Collective, Detroit, MI
2019 Fuck you, You don’t get to be Immortal, Group installation, Wayne State
University, Detroit, MI
Residencies and Workshops
2025 Garment as Personal Archive, Penland School of Craft
2021 Talking Dolls Artist Incubator Residency, Detroit, MI
Awards
2025 Diane Solomon Kempler Memorial Ceramics Award, University of Tennessee
Knoxville, Knoxville, TN
2024 Higher Education Partner Program, Penland School of Craft,
2022 Art Activity Award (x2), Wayne State University Detroit, MI
2021 Art Activity Award (x2), Wayne State University, Detroit, MI
2020 Undergraduate Research and Creative Projects Award Spring/Summer, Wayne
State University, Detroit, MI
Art Activity Award, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI
Teaching
2025 IACMI METAL bootcamp, Foundry Assistant, Knoxville, Tennessee
2024-2025 Teaching Assistant, University of Tennessee Knoxville
Employment
2022 Studio Assistant, Lauren Kalman, Detroit, MI
2021-2022 Studio Tech Assistant, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI
2020-2022 Kiln Room Manager, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI