Lyndsey Gillespie (she/they) is a multidisciplinary artist, designer, and researcher whose work bridges the liminal spaces of communication, storytelling, and human connection. Grounded in a human-centered design approach, Gillespie’s creative process thrives on empathy and collaboration, drawing from her expertise in experimental mixed media and immersive design to craft meaningful, transformative experiences.
Her research explores the fluidity of language and the interplay between perception, narrative, and cultural systems. Anchored by Simone de Beauvoir’s Ethics of Ambiguity, she examines how stories, symbols, and sensory experiences evolve across time, interpersonal relationships, sociopolitical frameworks, and personal introspection. These investigations are complemented by her artistic focus on ambiguity, where form meets anti-form, and the tangible collides with the ephemeral. Living with a chronic pain disorder, Gillespie’s art becomes a medium for translating her embodied experiences, offering meditative spaces that transform suffering into resilience.
Her installations, like the projection-mapped mixed media work Another Tower of Babel??, challenge traditional modes of communication, inviting audiences into contemplative encounters with abstract, nonrepresentational forms. Utilizing materials ranging from tufted sculptures to digital animations, her work is steeped in post-structuralist philosophy and reflects a fascination with the malleability of language and perception.
A graduate of the University of South Florida with a BFA in Graphic Design and a minor in Art History studying in Paris, Gillespie earned her MFA in Digital Art from the Eskenazi School of Art, where she was awarded the Mary Jane McIntire Endowed Fellowship. Her work has been exhibited at venues such as the Manhattan Graphics Center (New York), SITE/less (Chicago), and the FAR Center for Contemporary Arts (Bloomingon), and her projection designs have accompanied performances across the Midwest and beyond. Currently, her practice continues to explore the intersections of community, language, and culture, using lived experiences to uncover and expand meaning through art and research.
Elsie Edwards is a transfem/non-binary digital artist creating procedural animation and sculpture in both physical and metaphysical spaces. My artworks are made to give back joy and love given to me in the process of transitioning. Despite the stigmatized nature of marginalized genders, close communities have created a space of boundless desire.
The beauty and desire of transitioning has been sparkling bright and heart full and silk soft and absolute love. More than anything, the joy in the process of transitioning has been specific. Specific moments from people who have participated and created this joy together with me. This is a space of co-transitioning, where others have to transition their being along with the person who is trans, to become with them. Making art has become a process of making for these people.
I make across digital media to grow a garden of videos for those close to me. I use procedural 3D modeling and image manipulation to create abstract and ever changing imagery to mimic the ever changing landscape of my body and the flux of relationships and community.
I want to introduce this space of co-transitioning as a circle in a circle. Artworks were made from trans joy and for the people who have given me infinite love. But viewership is also a space of co-transitioning that everyone is welcome in. Please come in and build the landscape of co-transitioning, and become more than you were before.
Elsie’s work has been presented through national and international venues, including at CICA Museum (South Korea), LoosenArt (Italy), Woman Made Gallery (Chicago), and SITE/less (Chicago). She has presented locally through Roses Midwest gallery and in an inaugural exhibition at Indiana University’s student-run Tangent Gallery. She holds a BFA in Photography from the University of Utah and an MFA in Digital Art from Indiana University. She has received the Della Fricke art award for teaching during her MFA.