Operation Popple People

Liz Gardner's living space has been taken over by giant popples. A colorful ensemble of the muppet-esque creatures crowds her Kansas City apartment, and the mixed-media artist has even taken to signing off her phone messages as "Liz Popple."

If popples pervade Liz's life, it is hardly an accident. The custom-made creatures -—ranging from a pod-shaped infant to a round, furry figure the size of a small parade float —- are the artist's variation on the children's toys from the 1980s. Liz's Popples go on parade on June 3 as part of her Olive Gallery Show entitled "Operation Popple People," which will also include her recent mixed-media works.

Since she received her first popple at the age of 5, Liz has designed popples that correspond to specific stages in her life. A popple representing grade school is inlaid with one of her early writing assignments and a screen-printed pattern of children holding hands, while a middle school popple's arms are folded self-consciously across its chest. A high school popple, decorated with a bra and jewelry, suggests a budding femininity, and a college-era popple boasts a colorful hodgepodge of textiles, language, maps and images from science books.

The popples reflect the artist's advances in craftsmanship as well as age. The most recent creation, constructed by sewing eight different panels of fabric together to form a giant white ball with a Snoopy-shaped head and a blue felt lining, appears minimalist compared to her earlier creations, but is actually more sophisticated in design.

"It's me now," Liz says of her newest creation. "I'm learning you don't have to be as busy with imagery and color. Before it was more happy accidents, but now it's more planned."

Like much of her artwork, Liz's popple project deals with comfort issues, self-exploration and the aging process. "I like that there's an inside and an outside level to them," she says. "You're able to see the isolation of the self as well as the environment it's shaped by."

The upcoming show will not be her first at the Olive, nor her first series of artwork to draw on biographical elements. A 2003 exhibit of Liz’s work, "Tweaking the Right Brain," grew from a fascination with the brain she developed as a child after doctors ran tests to make sure she was free of brain disorders. The artwork -- an example of which includes a drawing of a diver poised to dive into a swirling sea of thread pasted on a painted canvas -- examines the relationships between randomnesss and logic and the way the two manage to balance each other out.

The material Liz uses in her art often serves as a muse in itself. A new series of quilt-resembling pieces stitches together fabrics, magazine photos and other materials with colorful, zig-zagging thread. She has also completed collages with sheet music (she is a classically-trained violinist), sculptures using only hair and wire, and designs based on anatomical slides and microchips.

A native of Lincoln, Nebraska, Liz graduated from the University of Kansas with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Textiles in 2003. In 2002, she was awarded the Dorris Fair Carey Scholarship for excellence in textile design. Her work has been featured in solo gallery shows in Lawrence and Kansas City, and has been included in group shows as far away as Florence, Italy, where she studied painting in 2004. Her work has also been commissioned for paintings and used for set design in musical performance.

In 2005, she founded Liz Gardner Designs to market her line of pillows, linens and custom home furnishings. Though she classifies her designs as either non-functional (artistic) or functional (home decoration), all of her work employs the spontaneity, diverse materials and fine craftsmanship used to create her fine art.

To see examples of her pillows, popples and other fine art, check out www.lizgardner.com.

Photos taken by Tara Sloan