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.

My work begins with personal photographs, often self-portraits from years past, and takes shape through salvaged fabric, thread, and slow, tactile processes. In my 100-square-foot home studio in flood-prone New Orleans, I translate memory into textiles by stitching, cyanotyping pressed flowers from my garden, and dyeing fabric with plants I’ve tended for nearly a decade. I move between machine embroidering, hand sewing, and block carving, staying close to the physical rhythm of making. Years spent working with clothing 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:

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.