Summary
Ivy Guild is a contemporary artist and researcher working at the intersections of fine art, craft and scientific inquiry. She values the slow-made, place-based, hand-derived and foraged. Guild works in fiber, 2D and 3D mixed media, installation, ceramic and glass. Her research centers on speculative ecologies and specimens through the critical lenses of queer and crip theory. From her upbringing in the Sonoran Desert to her current home in the Great Basin, the structures and beings in her work emphasize the alien qualities of the natural world: the uncanny, the queer, or the pseudosecure. As a queer, disabled artist, Guild probes for moments of refuge in harsh spaces and visualizes evolved beings who thrive in the midst of calamity. These semi-anthropomorphic beings, such as Ootheca (2024) or Ebullition (2025), exist in liminal spaces, embodying harm and healing in an uncanny elsewhere beyond ecological collapse. Guild’s recent fiber sculptures, Desert Cirsium (2025) and A Quick Pinch (2025), combine hand-processed and naturally dyed wool with slip cast thistle. These felted nests buttress the fragile, barbed porcelain needles, holding the dichotomies that Guild seeks to balance in her work. These vessels reflect the multiple truths that a body or ecosystem can hold at once: the jagged and the smooth, the energized and the depleted, the dyed and the raw, and the defensive and the entrancing. Guild received Bachelor of Arts degrees in Visual Arts and Art History from the University of San Diego and her Master of Fine Arts in Studio Art from the University of California, Irvine.
Research interests
- Interdisciplinary Art
- Intersections between art, science and fiction
- Contemporary craft theory
- Queer theory
- Crip theory
Publications
- Buchet-Deák, Elisabeth (2022), “Hope and Beauty on the Edge of Collapse: The Artist as Care-giver and Composter in Times of Ecological Uncertainty,” Ecosystem X: E-Zine
- Nys Dambrot, Shannon (2022), “Ecosystem X: The Hybrid in Art History, From Monster to Survivor,” Ecosystem X: E-Zine
- Guild, Ivy (2021), “The Encyclopedia of Sublimation: Accompaniment to The Keeling (2021)”, ProQuest, UC Irvine
- Herbert Waldman, Shannon (2021), “Hopeful and Aware: MFA Work From CalArts and UC Irvine”, Hyperallergic
Notable exhibitions and curations
Residencies
- 2025 Brighton Press, East Bellows Falls, VT
- 2024 Stove Works, Chattanooga, TN
- 2023 PLAYA Residency, Summer Lake, Oregon
- 2022 Lighthouse Works Residency, Fisher’s Island, NY
- 2018 Artist’s Cooperative Residency and Exhibitions Project, Steuben, WI
- 2018 Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, Vermont
Exhibition Record
Solo
- 2026 Driftless, Neue Welt, Nashville, TN
- 2025 Grounding, The Depot Gallery, Sparks, NV
- 2021 The Keeling, Contemporary Art Center Gallery, UCI (MFA Thesis)
- 2016 God Has a Big Eraser, Visual Arts Center Gallery, USD (B.A. Thesis)
Group (selected)
- 2026 5th Annual Summer Exhibition, Parsonage Gallery, Searsport, ME
- 2026 The Library is Open, Press Yess, The Depot Gallery, NV
- 2025 Gravity: Desert Biennial Project, Arts Community Coalition NV, Apex Dry Lake, Las Vegas
- 2025 Torn by Light: Triennial Faculty Art Exhibition, Reno, NV
- 2024 Hand Wash Only, Holland Galleries, Reno, NV
- 2022 Reading Minds: Artificial Intelligence, Neural Networks, and the Reading Human, Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts, Purdue University Galleries, West Lafayette, IN
- 2022 Alumni Works, Copley Library, University of San Diego, CA
- 2022 Re-Covery II, Art Around Books, Brighton Press East, Bellows Falls, VT
- 2022 Ecosystem X: Future.Art.Awards, Mozaik Philanthropy, Los Angeles, virtual exhibition
- 2019 Intimacy of Visibility, curated by Lauren Leving, ACRE Projects, Chicago, IL
- 2019 GLAMFA, California State University Long Beach, Long Beach, CA
- 2017 21st Annual NO DEAD ARTISTS Exhibition, Jonathan Ferrara Gallery, New Orleans, LA
- 2016 Southern California/Baja Biennial, San Diego Art Institute, San Diego, CA
- 2016 The Art of the Book, Sebastopol Center for the Arts, Sebastopol, CA
Courses taught:
- ART 103A: Visual Foundations - Surfance
- ART 203B: Visual Foundations - Space
- ART 103C: Visual Foundations - Surface to Screen
Professional certifications
- B.A., Visual Art, University of San Diego 2016
- B.A., Art History, University of San Diego 2016
- MFA, Studio Art, University of California, Irvine 2021