Eileen Doktorski
Primary Medium: Found material
Eileen Doktorski Studio
Artist Statement
Concern regarding the environment prompted me to visit one of the most evident hallmarks of our current throw-away culture, the city landfill. I was captivated by the rich juxtapositions of textures covering nearly every square-foot of the landfill's surface. Amidst the mud and rubble were partially decomposed food, cow carcasses, broken toys, crushed plastic bottles and brand-new items still in their packaging. Plastic bags and diapers were everywhere. Chaotically intermingled with mud were books, bicycle tires and countless household items that would not have been discarded in less affluent parts of the world.
The visit had a profound effect on me and I sought permission to make direct castings from the landfill terrain. With access to work in restricted sites, I was able to document areas that in a day would be forever buried. Displayed as art these casts bring the subject of our collective waste into view for close inspection.
Eileen Doktorski Studio
Artist Statement
Concern regarding the environment prompted me to visit one of the most evident hallmarks of our current throw-away culture, the city landfill. I was captivated by the rich juxtapositions of textures covering nearly every square-foot of the landfill's surface. Amidst the mud and rubble were partially decomposed food, cow carcasses, broken toys, crushed plastic bottles and brand-new items still in their packaging. Plastic bags and diapers were everywhere. Chaotically intermingled with mud were books, bicycle tires and countless household items that would not have been discarded in less affluent parts of the world.
The visit had a profound effect on me and I sought permission to make direct castings from the landfill terrain. With access to work in restricted sites, I was able to document areas that in a day would be forever buried. Displayed as art these casts bring the subject of our collective waste into view for close inspection.
Selected Works
|  Landfill Artifact: Mattress Corner - 2009 - Plaster and graphite powder - 22" x 15"  Landfill Artifact: Bicycle Tires - 2009 - Cast bronze - 18" x 12"  Landfill Artifact: Calf's Head - 2009 - Plaster, mica, and graphite powder - 22" x 32"  Landfill Artifact: Doll's Head (detail) - 2009 - Plaster, mica, and graphite powder - 18" x 20"  Landfill Artifact: IV Intravenous Catheter - 2009 - Plaster and mica and graphite powders - 22" x 22" |
Artist Bio
Eileen Doktorski. Doktorski received her BFA from Parsons School of Design in NYC and her MFA from the Yale School of Art. She was a Fulbright Scholar at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, Poland and has received awards for her work from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New Jersey State Council for the Arts, The Utah Arts Council, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation and the Kosciuszko Foundation. She was the 2008 National Artist-in-residence at Artspace, Raleigh, NC and was the featured installation artist at the 16th Annual New Genre Festival, Tulsa, OK. In 2010 she had a solo exhibition of her work at the Sheehan Gallery, Whitman College in Washington. Her works have been presented in Utah at the Salt Lake Art Center, the Springville Museum of Art, and the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art; in New Mexico at ARTS 516, at Spaces in Cleveland, OH; in Colorado at the Fort Collins Museum of Contemporary Art and in Connecticut at the Housatonic Museum of Art. Doktorski has given lectures and demonstrations on her work and process at Brigham Young University, Provo, UT; Creative Arts Workshop, New Haven, CT; Edinboro University of Pennsylvania, Edinboro, PA; Artspace, NC, and the University of Nevada at Reno. She is Department Chair for the Visual Arts Program at Mt. San Jacinto College in Southern California.