Meet Elizabeth Sims | Artist

We had the good fortune of connecting with Elizabeth Sims and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Elizabeth, can you talk to us a bit about the social impact of your business?
Being a landscape-focused artist right now can feel fraught—my practice seems so ethereal compared to the work of activists, policy-makers, and non-profit workers. However, in my climate change reading group, the conversation between such folks and fellow artists is incredibly rich, imaginative, and generative. I believe that art, being impractical and boundaryless, is an important arena for the kind of interdisciplinary experimentation that can influence practical innovation in science, engineering, and politics.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
Being a fifth-generation Californian has shaped my art practice— I grew up with people with a deep sense of history and the changes it has wrought on this landscape. My rancher ancestors settled in southern California before there was a wall, while Spanish was still the primary language, and took seasonal hunting trips ranging from Baja to the eastern Sierras. These places and stories are all present in my work. My Grandfather escaped to California from the Oklahoma Dust Bowl, a man-made climate catastrophe I’ve been fascinated with from childhood. My artwork has always been an exploration of the west coast landscape, its history, and the nature of belonging to a place.

My creative practice begins with time spent in the backcountry and wild margins of the western US, and I’m most drawn to sites where cultural and natural histories intersect. I listen when natural phenomena ‘speak’ to me—things like ancient bristlecone pines, natural hot springs, abalone shells, and obsidian boulders fallen from old lava flows. I’m interested in the ways that the distance between the self and these unknowable relations can be filled. With empathy, imagination, and subsequent research, I attempt to form an understanding of an element’s way of being, its place in a spatial and temporal web. My work is an expression of that reach toward the vital non-human world and all it may have to share.

Grounded in these empathic encounters, my work constitutes paintings, rituals, and texts through which I unearth and imagine models of survival, resistance, connection, and liberation.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
Whenever I walk out the door of my Berkeley home, I marvel at the lush hills, gardens, and trees I get to ramble among. Once a visitor from South America by way of Switzerland commented that we had a greater diversity of trees here in Berkeley than she had seen anywhere in the world, a memory that makes me proud and appreciative of our biodiversity here in the Bay Area.

The interface of different ecosystems is beautiful to witness up in our hillside parks. One of my favorite ways to end a week here is with a sunset hike along Strawberry Canyon or Inspiration Point, taking in views of the Golden Fate and listening for great horned owls calling for their mates at dusk.

On the weekend after a hike, I might take a wander through the Berkeley Horticultural Nursery then stop for a slice of fungi pizza at Gioia next door. Then I can go to Monterey Market for a glorious selection of seasonal produce, dreaming up a soup or veggie roast on the spot to make for dinner that night.

In Oakland, I love to eat at Wahpepah’s Kitchen, a native-run restaurant celebrating indigenous foodways where I can’t resist the wild rice fritters and mushroom mole. I always try to keep up with the programming at Round Weather Gallery which features a dynamic roster of artists and directs funds towards climate crisis mitigation. I also love to visit the Gallery of California Art at OMCA for a snapshot of Californian cultural production ranging from Ohlone baskets to installations by Barry McGee.

For a day trip, I’ll head over the bridge to Marin for a hike in Point Reyes National Seashore and picnic at Shell Beach. On the way home, I’ll stop at Point Reyes Station to check out Blunk Space, a gallery dedicated to preserving the legacy of iconic California woodworker J.B. Blunk, and Point Reyes Books for the best selection of natural history books I’ve ever encountered.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
Without my family and their old California stories I would not have the connection to the land that I have or the imperative to continue and deepen the narrative.

At times can’t believe the caliber of creatives I somehow find myself among here in the Bay Area. There is a true sense of purpose and community here that I find nourishing and inspiring.

Website: https://www.elizabethsimsprojects.com/

Instagram: @elizabethsimsprojects