Elizabeth Mead’s sculpture, drawing, and photographs have been exhibited across the U.S. as well as in Australia, England, Iceland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Portugal, and Taiwan . She has designed more than two-dozen theatrical productions including work with the internationally acclaimed, Tony award winning Theatre de la Jeune Lune.

A recipient of the Japan/US NEA Creative Artist Fellowship (2002-03), Mead spent six months living and working in Japan. Mead has received recognition for her work in theater by the Dallas Theater League (1998) and the Theater Communication Group/NEA Designer Fellowship (1997, 1998). Mead attended the Ecole Internationale de Jacques Lecoq in Paris, France (1995). She was awarded a work-stay residency at Sculpture Space in Utica, New York (1992).

She has been a visiting artist and artist in residence at numerous distinguished institutions including Cité Internationale des Arts, Artist Residency, Paris, France, Slade School of Fine Art, University College, London, England, Nes Artist Residency Skagaströnd, Iceland, Youkobo Art Space, Tokyo, Japan , Carleton College, Northfield, Minnesota, Pacific Northwest College of Art, Southern Methodist University, and Burren College of Art, Co. Clare, Ireland.

Artist statement
In this current series “Fictional Reality: The Photograph and Its Object,” I move back and forth between paper objects and the photographs I make of them. The accompanying images are divided into two parts; the first set is straightforward documentation of the sculptures on a neutral background and the second are the digital images of the same set of objects, which I present as pictures rather than as documentation of sculpture. Between them, the power of work in each medium to evoke a fictional world—to be something other than what is literally present—rises to a new kind of visibility. An example of the aluminum shelf each of the paper sculptures sits on is represented in the first image.