June 2026 AIR: eliza myrie

eliza! Looking forward to what you will make while you are here in the lab! Let’s jump right in – I am so interested in your process of collecting sand. How did you first become interested in collecting? 

I have a little experimentation planned while in residence, and a fair amount of processing digital photos into actual prints. Sandwall is a series of about two dozen images that capture these sandcastle-like forms I build on various beaches. Before I was collecting any sand from these sites, I was just building forms, taking a photograph, and that was all that I had to mark the performance. At a certain point, that stopped feeling like enough. I have sand from about half the sites.

The impetus for this work was that I was having trouble finding support for a large-scale project, so I had to find another way to engage with the ideas. I had proposed building this cement-block wall with my father, who is a brick mason, and what I realized was that the core materials were blocks and mortar (cement/sand/water). I felt like I couldn't move forward with the project and realized that if I were on the seashore, I'd have most of the components.

Sand is an incredibly limited, not easily renewable resource on Earth, and even more so given our consumption. It doesn't seem to make sense, but it's true. Sand has an association with the passage of time that I appreciated, and I wondered what it might mean to bring these sands into the studio and imagine how to extend the materiality conversation in the work a bit further.

You mentioned the studio being an “ecology or constellation”. What kinds of things are happening for you in the studio right now? 

Yeah, there's always a few things going on. I'm really excited about my residency with Latitude because I'm coming back into the studio after a more staccato block of time; where I would have more brief moments to focus intently on a work i.e. make a sand wall or work for a time on a series of prints but I wasn't finding a sustained timeframe to meander and peruse the different curiosities coming up in the studio and in my mind.

Because I work across different media, though primarily see myself as a sculptor and printmaker,  there are quite a few threads being managed at the moment. I'm thinking about some photographs of found sculptures I took in Jamaica as recently as March. I’m imagining how I might use the collected sand from those performative sculptures in new sculptures and also investigate the material through a lens-based approach. There is some editing around videos of fountains I’ve been working on, and there are experiments with blind embossing in the print studio. Things do spring from one another; the Venn diagram of it all is many, many circles and many,many overlaps.

Sandwall is a project you’ve been working on since 2015, how has it morphed and changed in that time? 

Starting as an offshoot of another project all that time ago, and now in 2026, I think about it now as its own body of work much more. When I make travel plans, I check  to see whether I can make a sandwall at any location nearby. I've now built these across all four seasons on both saltwater and freshwater beaches. I have a few sites where the research showed it was possible to make something, but the reality did not line up. At this point, many of my friends have been present for these art interventions, as beaches are leisure spaces where we spend time together, and those are exactly the sites I want to make these works at.

Each photograph is structured around an expanse of land, water, and sky, which is about the only formula that holds across them.  I suppose I start each structure with the same length for the first course of blocks in the sand, too. They've been taken with different cameras, and each wall has its own characteristics: how many courses of sand it can support, the size of the sand grains, how temperature and moisture affect that, etc. Some of those things are only known to me, as you can’t tell from the image. I don't know how long I'll keep working on this project. I'm still interested in realizing them and seeing what other landscapes and scenes emerge. I think the sand collecting raises some new considerations, and the more recent locations have resulted in more exciting pictures in more crowded spaces. There is more to orchestrate there, and I have different decisions about how I build and capture the documentation.

Your practice extends beyond the studio into teaching and artist-centered communities. How have experiences such as your work as a longtime educator at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and co-founding Black Artists Retreat [B.A.R.] shaped your approach to art-making?

As an artist, you are working amongst others, trying to participate in a larger conversation around ideas, disciplines, and form. This can be hard to remember when you're alone in your studio facing difficult material, technical, or conceptual problems.

My teaching practice and working with younger people have been enriching, especially as I've gotten older. I think it's so important to understand what young people are thinking. It is easy to become static in your various sets of stratifications and lose touch with what is happening elsewhere or with other groups. But you need to know! And a space like [B.A.R.], where you’re amongst similarly invested and rigorous makers, it motivates you. One of my main contentions about that gathering was that it is different to be present with other makers outside of the hierarchies of exhibitions/lectures/etc. When the focus is on the group instead of the individual, something special can happen; it's a grounding force and a necessary one in the face of the wild choice of being an artist.

What songs, artists, podcasts, or rituals are inspiring you right now? 

I’m a long distance runner, and I’ve been doing that for 23 years. That activity changes from season to season, and it’s been a great teacher for me. I’ve been dealing with some achilles issues, and so I’m learning a lot about patience and humility.  The ritual right now is being grateful for what I can do on a given day, then doing that as a celebration of the ability.  Sometimes this means walking instead of running, so I just take the camera out and walk around Pilsen or Little Village. Get a snack.