DVAA Member since 2021

Lia Huntington

2026 dvaa resident

Website: www.liahuntington.com

instagram: @brick.and.wire

About:

Lia Huntington is an interdisciplinary artist and occupational therapist, amphibiously moving between these roles to support healing and inspiration through observing and finding connections. She is interested in the dynamics of interconnectedness, reexaminations of value, the accumulation of traces, and the power of attention. Her art work is grounded in metalsmithing and documentation processes; it includes photography, jewelry, papermaking, video, and installation. She lives in South Philly and is a member of DaVinci Art Alliance and the Philadelphia makerspace NextFab. Exhibition spaces have included DVAA, the Baltimore Jewelry Center, Peters Valley School of Craft, and Schuylkill Nature Center.

Artist Statement:

My work is a collaboration with materials and spaces that are in between – often overlooked or discarded. Through my art practice I reexamine how we assign value, and explore ways to grow connection and energy through attention and care. Energy takes many forms: inspiration and creation, the forces holding together atoms, the magnetic fields of planets. Some structures hold energy: the cell’s permeable membrane, the soft edges of organs, the solid borders of a brick wall, the lattice of a woven produce bag or a chainlink fence. Some structures are channels for energy: the living fibers of a vine, the powerline, the pipe, the highway, networks of systems that distribute resources. Energy moves within us and between us, but it can get blocked and disrupted. We can become overwhelmed, detached, lose awareness of the connections between everything animate and inanimate. In a world of unjust resource distribution, labor that is overlooked, and poisons intertwining with beauty – there are inevitable periods of freezing up in isolation and disconnection. But we are embedded in inherited surroundings, and the remnants we leave behind connect us to one another. Our shared spaces accumulate traces of each other. Noticing these patterns – bringing my attention to the ways energy and connections move across space and time – helps me tend my own energy. Finding the traces of care and connection in overlooked spaces and devalued materials can open up an expansiveness. My own healing grows through the process of collecting, synthesizing, and tending materials and experiences to create new small realities in art objects and spaces. My work is an invitation for others to find energy and healing through the traces within their own surroundings.