Spring Hurlbut

Spring Hurlbut's work is concerned with the relation between sculpture and architecture. For example, she has put entablatures and mouldings in the hallways of office buildings. In so doing, she pulls these architectural elements out of context to emphasize how they are usually taken for granted.

Hurlbut's first body of large-scale works took the form of elaborate plaster masses wrapped around columns and walls. She dragged her hands through the wet material leaving imprints behind. These labour-intensive and on-site fabrications functioned to capture the marks of her own body, dispelling the common assumption that our built environment simply exists.

Her works have shifted from these organic investigations of the body's involvement in constructing architecture to a study of the origins of classical Greek architectural forms. Ovo and Claw Entablature (1990) is an example of this later body of work. Throughout her career, she has investigated architectural features and has used them as a source for her artwork.

Spring Hurlbut was born in Toronto in 1952 and continues to live and work there. She attended the Ontario College of Art from 1970 to 1973 and the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 1973-74. Her works have been exhibited internationally in group shows and in site-specific installations in non-conventional spaces like warehouses and commercial buildings.