Whereas many within the artwork trade have been jetting to Miami for the busy truthful week earlier this month, the artist Liz Nielsen was on the freeway in her 2022 Ford Transit van someplace between her house and studio in upstate New York and Florida.
The artist is understood for her dynamic photograms and is represented by Soco Gallery and Miles McEnery, and likewise exhibits with Danziger Gallery, Hexton Gallery and London’s Black Field Challenge. However for many of Miami Artwork Week, Nielsen was carrying her artwork mover hat. She was contracted by Soco and the New York galleries Geary Modern, Morgan Lehman Gallery and Marisa Newman Tasks to move artwork for his or her stands at numerous festivals.
“I’m in good place with my artwork profession, however the trade is all the time a rollercoaster for many artists,” Nielsen says. She confirmed a brand new work, Stormy Stone Stack (2024), on Danziger’s stand at Untitled, and says her aspect job affords her a type of “stability” and a much less tight funds to get pleasure from what the week has to supply: “I don’t really feel as dangerous to spend $20 on a vodka soda and I can have face time with my sellers and collectors.”
Liz Nielsen’s Stormy Stone Arch (2024) was featured on Danziger Gallery’s stand at Untitled Artwork in Miami Seashore Courtesy Liz Nielsen
This was Nielsen’s third yr in Miami behind the wheel of her art-filled van, which she calls “Genie”. The artist’s longest route, nonetheless, was a five-day drive from New York to Palm Springs to attend the Intersect truthful with Elijah Wheat Showroom, the Newburgh, New York-based gallery she runs together with her life companion Carolina Wheat.
Nielsen added artwork transportation to her ability set as an natural end result of her background in art-handling. A stint with David Zwirner’s art-handling group almost a decade in the past offered her an understanding of inventory-keeping and the physicality of works in several supplies. “I all the time say I graduated from the David Zwirner College,” she says.
The artist, who calls her analogue images approach “light-painting”, began out by transporting her personal work, which has step by step grown in scale. “Galleries have many occasions requested if I’d be keen to maneuver my work and mount it,” she says. As a gallery proprietor, she additionally typically finds herself carrying Elijah Wheat Showroom artists’ works between states. “I have already got a van, so I realised I shouldn’t wait any longer.”
Ghost of a Dream, coming down is the toughest factor, 2023 Courtesy the artist and Geary, New York
The community of galleries Nielsen works with stems from her personal trade connections. Nielsen and Wheat, for instance, curated a gaggle present titled When the Spirit Strikes You for Geary’s Hudson Valley house earlier this yr. So Nielsen was the apparent selection when the gallery proprietor Dolly Geary wanted to haul the artist collective Ghost of a Dream’s composite digital photographs on aluminium to Untitled—the place they gained this yr’s 21c Museum Accommodations Acquisition Prize.
“She is accustomed to Ghost of a Dream’s work and we belief her fully,” says Geary, who beforehand labored with extra typical logistics companies. The seller says she prefers the “flexibility” of a smaller enterprise: “Liz was notably versatile with our schedule and simple to speak with, and she or he was in a position to decide up the work at a late date, which gave us extra time to prepare.”
Soco’s managing director Hilary Burt tasked Nielsen with bringing Lauren Luloff’s dyed silk work to Miami for related causes. “She is our first selection for transport, and we guide her at any time when attainable,” says Burt, who additionally works with extra typical artwork shippers if wanted. “However once we can, we choose to assist smaller corporations, particularly if they’re women-owned.”
Nielsen was on the highway again up north two days after Miami Artwork Week wrapped. After dropping off a offered work at a collector’s home in Delray Seashore, Florida, she drove to Charlotte, North Carolina, the place Soco is positioned. From there it was almost 14 hours to New York. Following a couple of drop-offs in upstate New York, she was all achieved round one week after she first hit the highway.
Liz Nielsen’s van, which she nicknamed Genie, on the highway between upstate New York and Miami Seashore Courtesy Liz Nielsen
She often passes the lengthy stretches of freeway driving by listening to audiobooks of thrillers and cliffhangers, or uplifting jams by Stevie Nicks and Billie Eilish. “I do push-ups to get my blood going,” she says. Her ways for protecting the artwork secure embody avoiding stays at lodges within the centre of city areas, parking with the van’s door dealing with a wall and ideally beneath a lightweight supply and a digital camera, and reserving rooms which have a view of the car parking zone.
Nielsen enjoys the flexibleness of with the ability to decide her artwork transferring itinerary and prioritise her studio apply when she must. Proper now, for since, she is staying put till she opens her solo present with Miles McEnery in March.
“At this level in my profession, I’ve a studio assistant in addition to a day job,” Nielsen says, however she is assured she’s going to quickly be at a “place the place I don’t should drive the van”. She provides: “I consider that each one artists are in several positions and it’s about sustaining a stability between their artwork and what else they do to make a dwelling.”
