Cindy Tower American

Cindy Tower is a painter, sculptor, video and performance artist who lets her creative background shine through in her practices. Tower’s “Combine” paintings break divisions between the materials of artmaking and ordinary things like old dresses; between painting and sculpture; and between the fields of art and daily life. Their themes traditionally have had an environmental perspective on consumption, intimacy, obsolescence, loss, and transcendence as they interplay with the natural world. They are landscape-based, often biographical, with elements in the paintings standing in for herself, family members, or moments or places in her life.

Her paintings are an overwhelming celebration of materials and process. They hope to provide the viewer with a visceral, physical experience that not only engages but also actually engulfs the viewer in the self-contained environment of each work of art. Tower’s views are optimistic in that they create beauty despite being formed out of the rejected detritus of modern consumer society. Tower provides social commentary on collective wastefulness and over-abundance.

Born in Alamogordo, New Mexico, Cindy Tower received her B.F.A. from Cornell and was a forerunner of the Williamsburg art scene in the early eighties. She went on to obtain her MFA in 1988 from the University of California, San Diego, where she studied under Eleanor Antin and Allan Kaprow. Her work has been reviewed in national publications, including Art in America and The New York Times. Cindy currently splits her time between maintaining a studio in Branford, CT and in San Antonio, TX.

Tower has exhibited nationally and has been the focus of numerous one-person exhibitions including the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, the Mykonos Biennale in Greece. Tower is a social activist who also uses her artistic skill in support of racial, gender and housing equality, animal rights and awareness of climate issues.