Vivien Collens is a mid-career abstract artist born in Cleveland, Ohio, whose current practice includes large-scale, site-specific sculpture installations. After graduating with a BFA from Carnegie Mellon University, she studied in San Miguel de Allende Mexico for two years, receiving an MFA from Institute Allende. In 1970 she returned to her hometown of Cleveland , where she worked at the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Cleveland Institute of Art. In 1977, after achieving regional recognition for her work (relief wall constructions, and shaped constructed painting installations) she moved to NYC, where she received numerous fellowships, including Yaddo and MacDowell. Her early NYC works (signed "Vivien Abrams") were widely shown in NYC and elsewhere in the 70s and 80s and are in museums and corporate collections nationwide. In 2015 Collen’s had a NYC solo exhibition, “Urban Studies and City Blocks” at the Rockefeller Center Gallery of Gensler Architects. City Blocks- her first freestanding sculptures, were exhibited there with her Urban Studies paintings from the past few years. At that point, she decided to focus on sculpture –focusing on urban architecture and energy. During a 2017 residency at Salem Art Works, she learned to weld. Since then, she has created installations at sculpture parks and museums of her monumental-sized public sculptures. Artist Statement: My sculptures are often composed of various modules, serving as different iterations of an original form. I like to begin a work with materials I’ve selected, with only an inspiration. I manipulate the elements I’ve made (or collected), adding to them, rearranging and reordering them as something meaningful develops, a concept clarifies, and a title feels right.