About | Bio

Liz Lessner is a sculptor whose work combines traditional fabrication techniques and emerging technologies to create novel sensory experiences. These often interactive objects stage encounters that reframe common occurrences and routine happenings.

Lessner has had solo shows at VisArts in Rockville, MD; Honfleur Gallery in Washington, D.C.; Big Orbit, a Center for Exploratory and Perceptual Arts Project Space in Buffalo, NY; and The University of Oregon’s Eric Washburne Gallery in Eugene, OR. She has exhibited her work nationally and internationally including A.I.R. gallery in Brooklyn, NY; The CrossLab for Innovation and Prototyping at the University of Fortaleza in Fortaleza, Brazil; the Guapamacátaro Center for Art and Ecology in Michoacán, Mexico; and Everard Read’s Circa Gallery in Cape Town, South Africa. She has an MFA in Media Study from the University at Buffalo. Her research into embedded electronics‘ ability to create novel sensory experiences has been supported by grants like the Mark Diamond Research Fund, fellowships like the Eyeo Artists Fellowship, and awards like a Fulbright Research Award. She was a 2019 Fulbright Scholar affiliated with the Department of Expressions and Languages at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro as well as the CrossLab Research Group and the Lab for Innovation and Prototyping at the University of Fortaleza in Ceará, Brazil.

She is the founder of the Sensory Engagement Lab, a community-based research platform that probes how novel combinations of materials and embedded electronics contribute to sensory experience by fostering collaborations between artists, technologists, and other thinkers to produce interactive and experimental art works. She is also a co-founder of Yes We Cannibal, a Baton Rouge, LA based  counter-institution that offers an open home for unrestricted and non-hierarchical cultural experimentation in the areas of art, music, food, social research and performance.