Drew Shiflett

Drew Shiflett, Untitled #98, watercolor, graphite, canvas, canvas threads, cheesecloth and handmade paper, 52" x 57" x 1", 2023.

Drew Shiflett (born 1951) is an American visual artist based in New York. She is known for layered, collaged paper and fabric constructions that straddle drawing, relief and sculpture. These handmade, hybrid works, which she terms "constructed drawings," offer subtle examinations of surface, structure and texture through their attention to materials, intuitive processes, and loose patterning. They consist of monochromatic, interwoven sections of handmade paper and fabric upon which she draws repetitive and sectioned lines and marks, producing meditative, quilt-like "grids of grids." Writing about her later work, critic Raphael Rubinstein observed, "One of the pleasures of Shiflett's art is being able to follow her process step by step, relishing the care with which each element has been positioned, the unpredictable but somehow always apposite interruptions of patterning. Employing a distinctive eccentric modularity, [she] lets each of her wall pieces develop gradually." Her work has been exhibited at venues including the Drawing Center, Baltimore Museum of Art, SculptureCenter, Weatherspoon Art Museum, Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft and Kunststiftung K52 (Berlin).

Life and career Shiflett was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1951. and group shows at Art in General, Artists Space, SculptureCenter and the Snug Harbor Cultural Center, among others. In the 2000s, she has had solo exhibitions at the Islip Art Museum (2004), the Lesley Heller Gallery in New York (2006–18),

She is based in New York City and East Hampton. These pieces alternated between whimsical, assemblage-like pieces such as Hairy Pink (1990, described as displaying "a bold Gustonian goofiness") Tongues (2000) offered a range of allusions with appendage-like forms that resembled levers, pedals or architectural details; Easel Sculpture #2 (2000) was a wry navigation of the space between picture and object, in both form and title. Her work belongs to private and public collections that include the Baltimore Museum of Art, Francis J. Greenburger Collection, Guild Hall Museum and Islip Art Museum.