Growing up in New Orleans as the daughter of an electrician, Carlie Trosclair spent her formative years in historic residential properties at varying stages of construction and renovation. Reflectively her work explores the genealogy of home by using latex as an architectural skin to create sculptural installations that highlight the structural and decorative shifts evolving over a building’s lifespan. Trosclair earned an M.F.A from the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis, and a B.F.A from Loyola University New Orleans. She is an alumni of the Community Arts Training Institute in St. Louis, and the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts (NOCCA). Select artist residencies include: Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts (NE), Joan Mitchell Center (LA), Loghaven Artist Residency (TN), Tides Institute & Museum of Art (ME) (MI), Vermont Studio Center (VT), and The Santa Fe Art Institute (NM). She is the recipient of the Riverfront Time‘s Mastermind Award, Regional Arts Commission Artist Fellowship and the Great Rivers Biennial Award. In 2023 Trosclair was named the Ellis-Beauregard Fellow for the Visual Arts and the South Arts Louisiana State Fellow for Visual Arts.
Approached through a lens of reordering and discovery, Trosclair’s work explores the liminal space between development and deconstruction; contemplating the living and transitional components of home. She found that even when abandoned, the presence of the body still lingers. Architectural components carry with them the layered histories of previous residents. These become the shells we leave behind; Relics of habitation and home-making. Paper-thin casts reshape the narrative of home as a sturdy secure space into one that is vulnerable and ephemeral.