Vija Celmins (2014)

Vija Celmins is a Latvian born artist, who immigrated to the United States with her family when she was ten years old. Armed with a nuanced palette of blacks and grays, Celmins renders limitless space-seascapes, night skies, and the barren desert floor-with an uncanny accuracy, working for months on a single image. Celmins has a highly attuned sense for organic detail and the elegance of imperfection. Vija Celmins received an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in 1996 and a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship in 1997. Retrospectives of her work have traveled to the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Walker Art Center, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Institute of Contemporary Art, London, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. In 2002, a retrospective of Celmins' prints was held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Celmins currently resides in New York. This documentary for the first time will unfold her process of creation as well as her unique personality. Filmmakers visited her in New York and Long Island and had an exclusive chance to observe her in her studio and witness her prominent status in NYC art scene. This film along with the retrospective of Vija Celmin's work at the National Art gallery "Arsenals" (Riga, Latvia) will be a part of Riga- European Capital of Culture- program.