* All images used with permission. Please do not distribute without first contacting the artist.
Virginia Fleck was born in New York City in 1960. She began making artwork in childhood and eventually studied at Portland School of Art and The School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. In 1990, Ms. Fleck moved to Austin, Texas, where she continues her work as a visual artist. Ms. Fleck has been the recipient of numerous grants and residencies including a fellowship for a residency and exhibition in Havana, Cuba.
Virginia explains her work by saying, “In 2002 I began collecting post-consumer plastic bags and wrappers for collage material. I use an exacto knife and the slow deliberate action of cutting, to extract, alter and subvert the advertising graphics, and with an inherently playful nature, I wrestle them through the sieve of formal beauty until they are no longer useful for marketing. Ultimately, I use these altered advertising images to create ebullient artworks in a mandala format. Mandalas, associated with wholeness and healing and are a non-religious, universal tool for meditation composed of highly decorative, symmetrical patterns. Making plastic bag mandalas is a joyful act of defiance, creates a commentary on ecological awareness and reveals the hidden beauty of disposable items that continually pass through our hands.”
Fleck’s work has been commissioned for the permanent collections of the US Embassy in Rwanda, the Marino Golinelli collection in Bologna, Italy, Whole Foods World Head Quarters in Austin, TX, Facebook Austin, TX, NYU Langone Hospital in NYC, Dell Children's Hospital in Austin, TX.
