Aycock, Alice

Internationally renowned sculptor, installation artist, and environmental artist Alice Aycock discusses the relationship of art and ideas, the evolution of her creative process, public commissions, and cutting her artistic teeth in New York City in the late 1960s and 1970s.

“People have to realize if you’re in this, you’re in it for the long haul. You’re not always getting the limelight, but that doesn’t mean you’re not working, that doesn’t mean you’re not doing shows… Having a career in art, it’s the long haul.”

Alice Aycock is known for her large-scale, architectural, and site-specific sculptures bearing the influence of minimalism and conceptualism. Aycock studied at Douglass College, the women’s division of Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ, from 1964 to 1968, where many Fluxus artists were teaching at the time. She subsequently completed an M.A. under the direction of Robert Morris at Hunter College of the City University of New York (1968–71). As a young artist in New York, Aycock exhibited at 112 Greene Street, an experimental space run by Gordon Matta-Clark. Over the course of her long and prestigious career, Aycock’s work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Venice Biennale, Documenta VI and VIII, and the Whitney Biennial. Her work is held in numerous collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Aycock has taught at the School of Visual Arts in New York since 1991 and the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore since 2010.