Today we’d like to introduce you to Anne Labovitz.
Hi Anne, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
I was born and raised in Duluth, Minnesota, a location that has impacted who I am as a person and artist. The connection to the awe and sublimity of Lake Superior continues to influence my artmaking today.
My artwork reflects the human condition by exploring relationships and complexities between art, humanity, and well-being. Incorporating physical and conceptual elements, I explore the human condition through interaction with color, light, and scale. For 30 years, I have created large-scale installations, paintings, printmaking, sculpture, and artist’s books. I received a BA, Art & Psychology, Minor: Art Education & Art History from Hamline University (1989) and an MFA from Transart Institute (Berlin, Germany, NYC)(2017). I am an adjunct professor and an MFA mentor at Minneapolis College of Art & Design (2020-present) and a long-time Walker Art Center Board member.
Creating art that reflects humanity and well-being is urgent work and active resistance to our divisive environment. My practice aims to propagate deeper conversations. From 2013 – 2025, I created and presented my project 122 Conversations: Person to Person: Art Beyond Borders https://122conversations.com/. It is based on building cross-cultural connections and promoting peace one individual at a time. I created 85 scrolls based on interviews with 10 people, including the mayor in each of six countries. The project included 2500 volunteers, six exhibitions, and a catalog supported by Sister Cities International, Tweed Museum of Art and University of Minnesota Duluth, School of Fine Arts. The exhibition traveled to Thunder Bay, Canada, Rania, Iraqi Kurdistan, Växjö, Sweden, Petrozavodsk, Russia, Ohara Isumi-City, Japan, and Duluth, United States. 122 Conversations was most recently seen at Minneapolis St Paul International Airport Humphrey Terminal pre-security 2019 – 2024. An archive exhibition will be presented at the Minnesota State Capitol in Fall 2025.
I established the I Love You Institute https://iloveyouinstitute.com/ to expand this type of work in 2018. The I Love You Institute is an artist-led site-specific project urgently working with communities to creatively address today’s world. We combine art making, social justice, radical kindness, and relational listening to normalize saying “I Love You” as an alternative to division and conflict. The Institute is a process-led, customized set of experiences. By that, I mean the process is open. We work closely and collaboratively with specific venues to construct the experiences. I am on-site, which can be a place customized often including at least two seats and a common, shared table. Through a creative dialogue, I engage with participants in discussion about key ideas such as hope, peace, gratitude and well-being. These are ideas that underscore human connection. I employ an active and engaged listening process with simple and straightforward questions. The idea is to create space for individual connection and creativity. These one-off events, performances, and interventions are invited by individuals, groups, and institutions (for example, art museums/art centers, libraries, hospitals, and schools). As an Institute, I work with partners to conduct small and/or large classes to teach the art curriculum I developed based on the philosophies of Martin Buber’s I Thou philosophy and Viktor Frankl’s theory that the motivating force for humans is to find meaning.
The Institute has undertaken dozens of projects throughout the United States. Combining socially engaged workshops and art making, the Institute connects people and creativity in innovative ways. One example is a public art intervention with TouchStone Theatre’s Festival UnBound in Pennsylvania. Starting with the prompt: “What are you grateful for?”, Together with the public we made hundreds of squares, which were then connected to make a quilt that led the festival parade towards the river. The quilt underscored the connection between people, communities and gratitude. Another recent example is the nation-wide collaboration with the Women’s Caucus of the Arts. In 2025, to launch the year-long partnership I conducted a workshop in New York at the College Art Association’s annual conference focusing on the prompt: “I am grateful for you,” participants created postcards with responses to send out to friends, colleagues, and family. Over the year, local chapters of the Women’s Caucus for the Arts will also undertake the project in their cities, and the gratitude will be propagated throughout the United States.
Through art-making, social justice, and relational listening, the Institute focuses on kindness as a radical act and often addresses the overlooked power of empathy and compassion in social transformation.
Other I Love You Institute projects include:
Convergence Expo, Plains Art Museum, Fargo, ND April 26, 2025
2024 Minnesota Council of Non-Profits and Minnesota Council on Foundations annual joint conference, St Paul, MN
Women of Wellness (WOW) Conference 2024: The Nexus of Well-Being and Art, Winona University, Rochester, MN
Mayo Clinic 2023 Conference on Brain Health and Dementia – Paths to Emotional Wellness, Rochester, MN
Bethel College in Kansas, Robert W. Regier Art Gallery, “I am Grateful for you”, Newton, KS
University of Minnesota, Duluth
Dance workshop with Boys and Girls Club of Duluth, MN
True and False Festival, Columbia, MO
Mary’s Place Women’s Shelter, for which I received a Forecast Public Art Grant, Minneapolis, MN
Rain Taxi’s Twin Cities Book Festival, Minnesota Fair Grounds, St Paul, MN
Bureau of Radical Accessibility, The Model: Home of the Niland Collection, Sligo, Ireland
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
An important lesson I’ve learned is that failure and vulnerability are pathways toward innovation and success.
Working every day and creating a daily practice, creating art, is essential for me. Life is hard and I believe that viewing art can bring moments of contemplation and joy. By creating monumental, intensely colorful, immersive art installations, the viewers experience not only these types of moments they can also inspire awe. Color activates the senses, and research shows that when we experience everyday awe, we’re happier because we are focused outwards toward others.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I work at the Nexus of Well-Being and Art. The I Love You Institute has synergy with my art practice because it also explores the human condition. As such, I have become incredibly interested in the interconnection between art and a holistic approach to health and connection. Well-being is an important part of feeling seen and heard and is central to the most basic human condition. Studies show that well-being and art integrate mental health (mind) and physical health (body), resulting in more holistic approaches to disease prevention and health promotion. These ideas resonate in my broader artmaking practice, and in that way, the I Love You Institute serves as an umbrella for my larger art praxis.
My most recent exhibition and public art commission, Convergence: Health & Creativity at the Plains Art Museum, is based on research and interviews with community groups and healthcare providers in the Fargo Moorhead area.. It includes a monumental, suspended atrium sculpture and 12 artworks alongside a large, public participatory wall. This interactive wall is an invitation for all visitors to write/draw their response to “What does well-being mean to you?” The exhibition is on view through July 13th, 2025.
My exhibition Art and Health at Louise Hopkins Underwood Center for the Arts, Lubbock, TX examined the themes of connection and emotive color. Exhibiting outside the Midwest, I experimented with moveable large sculpture, a new approach to monumentality and the negotiation of materiality. Utilizing a more playful approach with Tyvek, my new sculpture expanded my vocabulary with the material.
The Nexus of Well-Being and Art at Rochester Art Center expressed my research into the connection between art and well-being, culminating in 30 artworks and two commissions. After interviewing ten healthcare experts, I created a body of work that exemplifies resilience, community, and health. Once the exhibition came down the City of Rochester commissioned six light boxes to extend the exhibition into public space outdoors.
Over the past four years, I have developed deep knowledge in the field of Art and Health. I continue to research the connection between art and health in various ways. I connect, respond, bring people together, and build communities. I am committed to providing opportunities for shared creation.
You can see my work at the following venues:
Plains Art Museum, Fargo, North Dakota (through July 13, 2025)
Holiday Center, Duluth, MN
Duluth Entertainment Convention Center, Duluth, MN
Rochester Art Plaza, Rochester, MN (2026)
Happy Travels and Bon Voyage, Minneapolis St Paul International Airport Terminal 1 departures level mosaics. (pre-security)
Alzheimer’s Association, Minnesota-North Dakota Chapter, Minnesota office
Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN
MN Council of Nonprofits office, St Paul, MN
Minnesota State Capitol Gallery, Fall 2025
Robert Green Fine Art, Mill Valley, CA
Redleaf Center for Family Healing Gratitude, Hennepin County Medical Center, Minneapolis, MN
My artwork is in public and private collections, including the Walker Art Center, Minnesota Marine Art Museum, Minneapolis/St Paul Airport Collection, Frederick R Weisman Art Museum; Minnesota Museum of American Art; The Tweed Museum of Art, The Athenaeum Music & Arts Library, La Jolla; The Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN; Minnesota Historical Society; International Gallery of Portrait, Bosnia-Herzegovina; Växjö Kommun, Sweden; Isumi City Offices, Japan; University of Raparin, Rania, Iraqi Kurdistan; and City of Petrozavodsk, Russia.
What would you say have been one of the most important lessons you’ve learned?
Each of us has unique life experiences, passions, and knowledge; we all have something to offer this world!
We need each other, we are better together.
Nothing happens but for the initiative of a single individual.
Through failure, we learn new possibilities.
Pricing:
- 2,000
- 50,000
Contact Info:
- Website: Labovitz.com, Iloveyouinstitute.com, and 122conversations.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/annelabovitz/ and https://www.instagram.com/iloveyouinstitute/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/annelabovitz
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/annelabovitz/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/annelabovitz
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@annelabovitz
- Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/anne-labovitz
- Other: https://bsky.app/profile/annelabovitz.bsky.social
