Artists from the
The Female Aesthetic
exhibit STATEMENT My drawings represent the ethereal. An undeniable spirit within the fabric of these clothes reveals itself to me perhaps when I least expect. I have entranced with the notion of history within our possessions and how that history reveals itself over time. I began collecting garments from flea markets and small town second-hand shops about ten years ago while I was a Fellow at Skidmore College. It is not a surprise that I as I studied them and drew them, their power drew me in as well. To me, my garment drawings celebrate knowingness. As a collective history of women, they are sensual, powerful, and vulnerable. Within each garment I discover a Zen, a quite mystery. I am compelled to draw and construct these visual narratives through which I hope to enlighten upon the mystery and release the energy within.On the formal level, I think of myself as a colorist who is interested in the interaction between color, line and gesture, and in the complex and suggestive depiction of personality through graphic means. Most of my work is on Arches, Rives, BFK, or handmade paper. A paper surface allows me the ability to explore a mixed palette of line and color media with a calligraphic freedom that would be inhibited on canvas. A major theme that runs through both my graphics and animated work is that of the DIVA—the flamboyantly uninhibited female personality, along with the personal and political empowerment that implies. In 1996, Mum Puppettheatre loaned me a stockpile of puppets as models, left over from previous productions. This led to an explosion of graphic work over the past eight years inspired by puppets and absurdist theatre. I have been researching puppets at places like the Jim Henson Foundation (which has included me in two of their exhibitions and has acquired my work for their permanent collection). As subject matter, the images I am often concerned with are often gnome-like, puppet-like characters reminiscent of Alfred Jarry’s forerunner of absurdist theatre, Ubu-Roi; the buffoons of modernist playwright Michel de Ghelderode, and the symbolist and political figures of European puppet theatre. As a point of departure, there is inherently a degree of abstraction in a puppet. I find this to be a freeing force, giving me considerable license to explore colorist and gestural solutions to the depiction of the contradictions these images embody: awkward yet fluid, wooden yet alive, constrained yet brashly extroverted a personalities, often selfish, mischievous, egotistical, erotic, even magical exaggerations of human character. I have developed some of these diva and puppet-inspired works into animated films requiring thousands of drawings. The process of animation has, in turn, influenced my full scale works-on–paper producing diptychs, triptychs, and serial prints with progressive deviations.My sculpture is invested in and derived from the infinite surprises of natural forms; the delicacy of the heart of a milkweed pod, the central star of the dried poppy, the ragged wing of a butterfly. I embrace and hold these forms and transform them. When combined with other natural elements they comprise a new definition, a new look at nature. |
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| For More Information Contact: Ellen Chisdes Neuberg, Owner/Director GalleriE CHIZ 5831 Ellsworth Avenue Pittsburgh, PA 15232 Tel: 412-441-6005 FAX: 412-661-5662 Internet: galchiz@hotmail.com |
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