Artist Name: Lindsey Whittle (Sparklezilla) She/her
Residency Dates: May – July 2022
Born: Cincinnati, OH
Hometown: Fort Wright, KY
Lives & Works: Covington, KY
URL: www.Sparklezilla.com / Instagram: @Sparklezilla / Tiktok: @Spikow
Education:
2014 | MDES Fashion, Body and Garment, School of the Art Institute Chicago (studied under “SoundSuits” artist and mentor Nick Cave)
2009-2012 | Fashion Design, University of Cincinnati
2007 | BFA Art Academy of Cincinnati
Bio/Statement:
Lindsey Whittle, also known by her art name/identity Sparklezilla, is a multimedia performance and garment-based artist, textile print designer, art experience facilitator and educator. She uses colorful, transformable objects not only to form shapes, but as a starting point for collaboration.
Whittle is a professor and educator that has developed custom garment and performance art programs for the Art Academy of Cincinnati since 2016, and has been a Lead Teaching Artist for Artworks Cincinnati every summer since 2019. She later received the Greater Cincinnati Collegiate Collection’s (GC3) 2021 Excellence in Teaching Award for teaching at the Art Academy of Cincinnati. Whittle co-owns and co-instigates PIQUE, an experience gallery and Airbnb in Covington, KY, with her husband and fellow artist Clint Basinger. Since 2015, PIQUE has hosted two 24-hour performance art festivals with Annie Brown and Noel Maghathe, a Perform-A-thon in 2019, and a Perform-A-rama in 2021 amongst many other community-based events. Basinger and Whittle also regularly perform together in their sound art band “Spikow for Now”. PIQUE’s Airbnb has been featured in Architectural Digest and Whittle’s artworks have been featured by Hyperallergic.
Whittle constantly searches for new ways to bring art out of traditional spaces and into everyday life, and her practice is an ongoing conversation involving her past and present work. This is most readily seen in her wearable duration projects and textile prints which are visual dialogues about works from her archive. A single piece of Whittle’s work often has many applications where it can function as a prop, installation, wall work, sculpture, or be worn on a body. Since 2019, she shifted to focus to teamwork, where collaboration is central and these voices contribute to and inform her practice. For example, she rigorously builds her series “Shape Languages” together with her 22 collaborators, and this exchange acts as a foundation for decision-making and creating cohesive communication within her work. Modeling from research of lives of those such as John Cage and Mr. Rogers, Whittle’s current practice focuses on minimizing the gap between art and life. As a Fluxus artist at heart, she adopts the idea that everything has the potential to be an art object and every person has the capability to create and experience art.
Whittle’s work has been exhibited in Salem, MA, Chicago, IL, and Cincinnati Ohio’s Contemporary Art Museum.
Support: Lindsey Whittle’s residency is made possible with support from the Great Meadows Foundation, Louisville KY.
