self-portrait 2024

 

Lizz Freeman, a community-taught artist, began showing her work at MARS Artspace in Phoenix, AZ, at the age of 15. She was derailed by life on her way to art school and spent nearly 30 years with her studio practice relegated to predawn hours. Her multi-disciplinary practice began with photography and has evolved to encompass textile arts, printmaking, and installation.

Her work has been shown across the United States and is in private collections around the world.

She lives in New Orleans with her daughter and husband.

I have been a collector for a long time. A collector of images, objects, and textiles. I find calm and comfort in the slow and steady rhythm of hand quilting and embroidery; and balance it out with the high-speed hyper focus of 1,000 stitch per minute machine embroidery and quilting.

Years spent working with clothing (through mall retail, consignment, and then nonprofits) and witnessing the scale of textile waste have me committed to using secondhand materials, connecting environmental care with personal history. Humor and improvisation have long been tools for navigating uncertainty, and while my work is rarely overtly funny, it’s shaped by that same spark: the joy of surprise, the charge of the unexpected, and the surreal ways past and present overlap in both fabric and self.

Recent exhibitions include:

Surreal Salon 18, Baton Rouge Gallery, Baton Rouge, LA, January 2026

Semaphore (SOLO), The Parlour Gallery, New Orleans, LA, October 2025

Future Tense, The Joseph Gross Gallery, Tucson, AZ, September 2025

FELT, Glassel Gallery, Baton Rouge, LA, August 2025

And Now for Something New Vol. 7, LeMieux Galleries, New Orleans, LA, August 2025

Parts Unknown Vol.2, Staple Goods, New Orleans LA, Aug 2024

Treehouse, Traveler's, New Orleans, LA, April 2024

Master of None, Studio Archive Project, April 2023

Future Tense, The Robert Hillestad Textiles Gallery, Lincoln, NE, Feb 2023

Within This Expanse, The Post Office, Port Ewan, NY, Nov 2022

Tongue and Groove, Good Children Gallery, New Orleans, LA, Oct 2022

  • Camera gives artist, 15, career dream by Jennifer Barrett The Arizona Republic 1996

    I used to be kind of embarrassed by this article. But now that it’s a few decades later, I am blown away by 15-year-old Lizz’s drive and determination.