ABOUT
"In my studio form follows imagination, and function is a script for where and how we interact with the things we live with."
Vivian Beer is a designer/sculptor based in New England. Her work combines the sensibilities of contemporary design, craft and sculpture in works that alter viewers’ expectations of and interface with the domestic landscape and public spaces. Beer received a BFA from Maine College of Art & Design and a MFA from Cranbrook Academy. Her work is in many museum and public art collections including Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Brooklyn Museum of Art; the Museum of Arts and Design. She has held numerous residencies, including at the Penland School of Craft. She was a Research Fellow at the Smithsonian, recipient of John D. Mineck Furniture Fellowship, winner of Ellen Degeneres’ Design Challenge, and was named a USA Artist Fellow.
Her work is included in the collections of the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, The Metals Museum, The Currier Museum of Art and the Museum of Arts and Design, NYC and public art in the cities of Portland, Maine and Cambridge, Massachusetts. She holds an undergraduate degree from Maine College of Art and a Master’s of Fine Arts from Cranbrook Academy. Beer has held numerous residencies including at the Penland School of Crafts, the State University of New York at Purchase, and the San Diego State University. She was a 2014 recipient of an Artist Research Fellowship at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.
"To me, design in its most INSPIRING sense is not a market, job, skill or even a process. It is the patterns that interconnect things. Whether formed by nature or nurtured by culture, it is these connections that most interest me in making work... And one of the reasons I find myself endlessly fascinated by the subtle and powerful relationship between ourselves, our environment, our culture and the things we make or use within it."
