Erin Tyler
About
Selected Works
2025
2024
2023
2022
- Never Learned to Sew
- Care, site-specific installation
- Accumulation of Blue
- Studio Practice
** Works Available for Purchase
Erin Tyler
Photo: Jesse TylerCV
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2022 Studio Practice, Curiouser & Curiouser, Kansas City, KSSELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2025, Ordinary Signs, Practical Magic, Carolla Arts Exhibition Space, Springfield, MO
2025, Subset, Randy Bacon Gallery, Springfield, MO
2024, Sightlines, Obelisk Gallery, Springfield, MO
2024, “Care” site-specific installation/performance, Open Window, Red Gate Gallery, St. Louis, MO
2023, Missouri State University Juried Student Exhibition, Brick City Gallery, Springfield, MO. Juror: Caleb Taylor, Kansas City-based artist. Awarded: Best Graduate work.
2023, Collective/Difference, OH Gallery, Springfield, MO.
2022, Archetypes, The Set, Miami, FL
2022, Make to Know, Brick City Gallery, Springfield, MO
2022 Shœings, Monaco Gallery, St. Louis, MO
2020 The Art of Collage, Obelisk Gallery, Springfield, MO
2020 Collaborations, Obelisk Gallery, Springfield, MO
2019 Blackout, Obelisk Gallery, Springfield, MO
2019 West Central, Q-Enoteca, Springfield MO
2018 Piece by Piece, Brick City, Springfield, MO
2018 Open Studios, Idea X Factory, Springfield, MO
2017 Pop-Up Art Show, Q-Enoteca, Springfield, MO
CURATORIAL WORK
2024 Current State, (Co-Curatorial with Director of Exhibitions Jodi McCoy), Carolla Arts Exhibition Center, Springfield, MO.
Photo: Greta CrossAbout
Erin Tyler is a multidisciplinary, process-based artist living and working in Springfield, Missouri. Her work spans painting, collage, photography, drawing, assemblage, and writing, often blending analog and digital processes to explore belief, perception, and the hidden power of the everyday. Through intuitive arrangements and abstract visual systems, she investigates how materiality, care, and attention shape our understanding of meaning.
Erin recently recieved her MFA in Visual Studies at Missouri State University (May 2025). In 2023, she completed her first artist residency at the Villa Lena Foundation in Palaia, Italy. She has exhibited her work regionally throughout the Midwest, including a solo exhibition in Kansas City and numerous group exhibition. In 2023, she was invited to create a site-specific installation for Archetypes, a multidisciplinary art event in Miami.
Erin has taught studio art courses at Missouri State University and Missouri Fine Arts Academy and has led workshops at the Springfield Art Museum, The Villa Lena Foundation (Palaia, IT) , and The Pulitzer Arts Foundation (St. Louis, MO.)
Photo: The Pulitzer Arts Foundation
EDUCATION
2025 - MFA Visual Studies, Missouri State University
2018 BFA - Painting, Missouri State University
2018 BSED - Art & Design, Missouri State University
RESIDENCIES AND AWARDS
2023 October Creative Collaborator, The Pulitzer Arts Foundation, St. Louis, MO.
2023 Artist in Residence, Villa Lena Foundation, July 23 Tuscany, Italy.
2023 Best Graduate Award, Juried Student Exhibition Missouri State University, Springfield, MO.
WORK EXPERIENCE
Instructor, Drawing I, Missouri State University
Visual Arts Faculty, Missouri Fine Arts Academy 2019 - 2025
Visual Arts Instructor, Springfield Art Museum
Placeworks Artist, Springfield Art Museum
Visual Arts Instructor, Springfield Dream Center
PRESS
Greta Cross, “This New Art Exhibit Represents ‘pin drop’ of Missouri Contemporary Art” Springfield News-Leader, Cover Feature, July 14, 2024.
Missouri State University Reynolds College of Arts & Letters Blog, "Carolla Arts Exhibition Center Presents Current State"
Missouri State University, July 12, 2024.
Missouri State University Reynolds College of Arts & Letters Blog, "MFA Student Erin Tyler Gives Workshop at Pulitzer Arts Foundation," June 10, 2024. Link
Missouri State University Reynolds College of Arts & Letters Blog, “Graduate Student Erin Tyler Reflects on Her Artistic Practice” Missouri State University, January 18, 2024.
"Ordinary Signs, Practical Magic" was my MFA thesis exhibition, featuring a site-specific installation that brought together paintings, found objects, assemblage, sculptures, and writing. The work was exhibited at the Carolla Arts Exhibition Center in partnership with the Springfield Art Museum from May 27 to June 6, 2025.
Statement
My work is a study in belief—in art, in invisible forces, in the power of noticing. It asks how meaning is made through arrangement, care, and interaction with ordinary materials we encounter. Using photography, assemblage, collage, drawing, and painting, I respond to “ordinary signs” and reconfigure visual fragments into compositions that feel both grounded and enchanted. Each piece becomes a gesture of attention—a response to the quiet magic embedded in the everyday.
This installation reflects my interest in process as ritual and creation as an act of practical magic. I’m drawn to materials that carry histories—whether found, gifted, or repurposed—and to systems of visual language that help me locate myself in the world. Through these gestures, I aim to cultivate a slower, more attentive way of seeing. The work invites viewers into a shared space of observation and wonder, where even the most ordinary object might be charged with symbolic potential. This practice is a way of paying attention, of believing in what can’t be fully explained, and of holding space for beauty, uncertainty, and care.
This piece started with trying to make the space feel like a space for exhibition. It had been a working studio, so I spent time patching, painting, and addressing light. I knew early on I didn’t want to deal with fluorescents, so I brought in my own lights and started from there.
I placed painting came first; it felt like the anchor, and everything else grew around it. Some of the objects are handmade, like the nets and baskets. Others were found: red wooden spheres, bricks, a milk crate, and a last-minute plastic spiral a friend handed me during install. I’m drawn to materials that carry a sense of play or possibility, and I let them guide the arrangement.
I usually work with walls, but this time I wanted to stay closer to the ground. I didn’t use any nails or screws, which meant I had to be more inventive—suspending things from the ductwork, or making use of what was already here. That limitation actually opened up something new in me.
This piece, like most of my work, was made through a process of slow discovery. I don’t begin with fixed meaning; instead, meaning shows up as I work, and sometimes not right away. I’m learning to be okay with that. Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about structure—how much is too much, and what kind of order still leaves room for surprise.
Violet Austerlitz interviewed me in the space during the final stages of installation; a full recording of our exchange can be found here.
