Elisabeth Higgins OConnor fills Suyama Space with large-scale sculptures

The artists heart in throat, head in hands; tongue in knots, heart on sleeve was crafted specifically for the Belltown gallery.

A kindergarten-aged Elisabeth Higgins OConnor doodled a yellow blob with an orange triangle on a white piece of paper approximately 45 years ago. Her classmates crowded around her, adoring the little duckling.

More than four decades later, Higgins OConnor said something about that moment changed her. It helped spark her development as an artist. Over the years, her work got bigger and started incorporating different materials. Now the Sacramento, Calif., resident has her biggest work yet on display at Seattles Suyama Space, where her installation heart in throat, head in hands; tongue in knots, heart on sleeve is on view until April 25.

The show includes nine animallike works composed of found materials including bedding from thrift stores and cardboard from boxes behind stores. Higgins OConnnor uses the materials to explore aspects of frustration, joy and tragedy through their storytelling abilities.

Through April 25, Suyama Space, 2324 Second Ave., Seattle; free (suyamaspace.org).

I believe that materials have a language, like a poetic language that can be interpreted so these materials have a history, a resonance, Higgins OConnor said. Theyve been touched and handled and had other lives before their life with me.

Higgins OConnor uses large swatches of fabric in hopes that a familiar pattern can strike a chord with a viewer. Because she finds her materials in thrift stores, its possible that someone looking at the brown strip of fabric with white cherry blossoms at Suyama Space once owned the same fabric in their own house before Higgins OConnor laid it on top of a donkey falling down a set of stairs.

The 51-year-old artist, who earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts from Cal State Long Beach, thinks of each strip of fabric or piece of cardboard she places on the wooden armatures of her structures as strokes of a paint brush or marks with a charcoal pencil. After layering on materials, Higgins OConnor secures her work with drywall screws.

Theres so much in the process of making them, its almost like when I talk about how theyre made, its like where sausage comes from, Higgins OConnor said.

She began working on her installation in August at her studio in Sacramento. In late December, she loaded all of her pieces, none of which had been completely assembled yet, in a truck to bring to Seattle. In the final three weeks before the exhibition opened on Jan. 19, Higgins OConnor completed her work by attaching all the pieces together.

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Elisabeth Higgins OConnor fills Suyama Space with large-scale sculptures