BARBARA KNIGHT

Barbara Knight was born in Great Britain, 1941, moved to the United States as a child and grew up in suburbs of Washington, DC and New York City. She received a B.A. in English literature and studied at the Art Students’ League and the School of Visual Arts, NY. She later taught graphic design at Parsons School of Design and executed promotional graphic design for artists and galleries. Knight moved to Soho at the end of 1970 and began collecting ephemera and fabric remnants discarded by the local garment businesses and marrying them together. After publishing a seminal article on the history of pictorial trademarks such as Arm & Hammer and Sun-Maid Raisins, she made sculpture from their assembled boxes and showed them at Soho’s 55 Mercer Gallery, thus evolving from graphic design to the practice of making art. In the 1970s Knight had an opportunity to make some large-scale site-specific outdoor installations. Her interest in landscape, the dynamic between chance and structure and her practice of transforming ephemera and found materials into abstract art continue to the present time. Boxes and cardboard packaging materials have reappeared in her collage, mixed media works and assemblage throughout her career. 

She currently has work in a virtual exhibition at VanDeb Editions, L.I.C. NY, as well as recently in Mykonos Biennale, Greece; Project gallery, Athens; MAT/tam 40, Manto Arte Temporanea/Temporary Art Manto, Mantova, Italy; MatchMore Gallery, Crete; Andrew Edlin and Hal Bromm Galleries in New York; Sideshow and A.I.R. Galleries in Brooklyn and a juried show at Moon Gallery, Berry College, Georgia, as well as in Athens and Berlin. Her work is in private and university collections in the United States and Europe. She maintains studios with her husband in New York and Crete. 

August 2020

Website: https://www.barbaraknightny.com/