The artist is a
natural idealist who begins with form and ends with meaning. When Kathleen
Elliot first began to discover herself as an artist she had an immediate
interest in the use of glass to create forms reminiscent of nature
itself—branches presenting leaves, flowers, and fruit, which over time
coalesced into abstract forms as doppelgangers for the real objects she wished
to emulate. Every artist develops a world view through their work that may not
manifest in linguistic terms. However, the protracted activity of art making,
developing the channels of meaning, and growing through the stages of one's
discipline, makes one adroitly sensitive to the importance of a value system to
accompany it. There is a fervor to the new way of thinking about how art can
reflect life in these tumultuous days of political rancor. It’s been building
for 20 years and is finally peaking in every corner of society. The voyage of the artist is, less and
less, a pure exploration of ideas as forms, and progressively answers to issues
or problems in contemporary society.
It’s been
repeatedly said of Elliot that she studied the academic disciplines of
philosophy, linguistics, beauty, and spirituality to amass an educated basis
for her work in glass. Clarity in regard to the specific lessons gleaned within
each of these disciplines would immensely accrue the degree of portent in
considering the art work itself. Elliot is an adherent to the philosophy of Martin
Heidegger, who proposes that objects are what they are because of how we
interact with them, rather than because of some intrinsic definition. One very
prevalent characteristic of Elliot’s work is its preciousness—the branches and
leaves that comprise the tactile form of the sculptures have been fashioned
with intent to charm the viewer.
No doubt the crystalline, half transparent glass she used is meant to
hint at the vulnerability of nature, its tenuous relationship to the growths of
junk food that mysteriously emerge from them, transmuting the natural world
into an unnatural one. Despite attempting to compel the viewer to address the
dysfunction of these curious fruits, Elliot unintentionally makes them an
idiosyncratic source of fascination. We want to unravel them.
DENATURED TRUTHS: THE SCULPTURES OF KATHLEEN ELLIOT
The artist is a
natural idealist who begins with form and ends with meaning. When Kathleen
Elliot first began to discover herself as an artist she had an immediate
interest in the use of glass to create forms reminiscent of nature
itself—branches presenting leaves, flowers, and fruit, which over time
coalesced into abstract forms as doppelgangers for the real objects she wished
to emulate. Every artist develops a world view through their work that may not
manifest in linguistic terms. However, the protracted activity of art making,
developing the channels of meaning, and growing through the stages of one's
discipline, makes one adroitly sensitive to the importance of a value system to
accompany it. There is a fervor to the new way of thinking about how art can
reflect life in these tumultuous days of political rancor. It’s been building
for 20 years and is finally peaking in every corner of society. The voyage of the artist is, less and
less, a pure exploration of ideas as forms, and progressively answers to issues
or problems in contemporary society.
It’s been
repeatedly said of Elliot that she studied the academic disciplines of
philosophy, linguistics, beauty, and spirituality to amass an educated basis
for her work in glass. Clarity in regard to the specific lessons gleaned within
each of these disciplines would immensely accrue the degree of portent in
considering the art work itself. Elliot is an adherent to the philosophy of Martin
Heidegger, who proposes that objects are what they are because of how we
interact with them, rather than because of some intrinsic definition. One very
prevalent characteristic of Elliot’s work is its preciousness—the branches and
leaves that comprise the tactile form of the sculptures have been fashioned
with intent to charm the viewer.
No doubt the crystalline, half transparent glass she used is meant to
hint at the vulnerability of nature, its tenuous relationship to the growths of
junk food that mysteriously emerge from them, transmuting the natural world
into an unnatural one. Despite attempting to compel the viewer to address the
dysfunction of these curious fruits, Elliot unintentionally makes them an
idiosyncratic source of fascination. We want to unravel them.
In the case of
her series “Questionable Foods” she specifically directed herself to recognize
how a relationship to beauty and its connection to forms of organic life,
creating fabricated versions of real plants, could be expanded to consider the
metaphoric, and also the very real, relationship between nature, food, health,
sustenance, indulgence, compulsion, and good and bad versions and ideas of
food. In our contemporary society, the movement toward consumption of organic
foods as a single base of health and sustenance, and the disavowal of
commercially defined “fake” food items, packaged, mass produced foods.
The individual
examples within Elliot’s “Questionable Foods” series all riff off the imagery
of packaged foods, commercial products rather than real sustenance, with an
entertainment factor to their designed exteriors. The types of art works
comprising her Questionable Foods series appear in three distinct versions: as
her own previous sculptures utilizing commercially designed additions as a form
of virus; as food objects covered in a skin of advertisements; and two-dimensional
models of ‘his & hers’ gingerbread cookies with commercials for a direct
exterior. In one case she builds a large strawberry plastered with advertising images
for commercial foodstuffs, as if to say, you want indulgence but here is real
sugar. Clearly, the dynamic between appetite and real hunger is central to the
experience she is metaphorically presenting. The fracture between appearance
and essence has remained constant from the beginning of her career and
continues to inform its making even as she departs from a dynamic of beauty
alone.
DENATURED TRUTHS: THE SCULPTURES OF KATHLEEN ELLIOT
The artist is a
natural idealist who begins with form and ends with meaning. When Kathleen
Elliot first began to discover herself as an artist she had an immediate
interest in the use of glass to create forms reminiscent of nature
itself—branches presenting leaves, flowers, and fruit, which over time
coalesced into abstract forms as doppelgangers for the real objects she wished
to emulate. Every artist develops a world view through their work that may not
manifest in linguistic terms. However, the protracted activity of art making,
developing the channels of meaning, and growing through the stages of one's
discipline, makes one adroitly sensitive to the importance of a value system to
accompany it. There is a fervor to the new way of thinking about how art can
reflect life in these tumultuous days of political rancor. It’s been building
for 20 years and is finally peaking in every corner of society. The voyage of the artist is, less and
less, a pure exploration of ideas as forms, and progressively answers to issues
or problems in contemporary society.
It’s been
repeatedly said of Elliot that she studied the academic disciplines of
philosophy, linguistics, beauty, and spirituality to amass an educated basis
for her work in glass. Clarity in regard to the specific lessons gleaned within
each of these disciplines would immensely accrue the degree of portent in
considering the art work itself. Elliot is an adherent to the philosophy of Martin
Heidegger, who proposes that objects are what they are because of how we
interact with them, rather than because of some intrinsic definition. One very
prevalent characteristic of Elliot’s work is its preciousness—the branches and
leaves that comprise the tactile form of the sculptures have been fashioned
with intent to charm the viewer.
No doubt the crystalline, half transparent glass she used is meant to
hint at the vulnerability of nature, its tenuous relationship to the growths of
junk food that mysteriously emerge from them, transmuting the natural world
into an unnatural one. Despite attempting to compel the viewer to address the
dysfunction of these curious fruits, Elliot unintentionally makes them an
idiosyncratic source of fascination. We want to unravel them.
In the case of
her series “Questionable Foods” she specifically directed herself to recognize
how a relationship to beauty and its connection to forms of organic life,
creating fabricated versions of real plants, could be expanded to consider the
metaphoric, and also the very real, relationship between nature, food, health,
sustenance, indulgence, compulsion, and good and bad versions and ideas of
food. In our contemporary society, the movement toward consumption of organic
foods as a single base of health and sustenance, and the disavowal of
commercially defined “fake” food items, packaged, mass produced foods.
The individual
examples within Elliot’s “Questionable Foods” series all riff off the imagery
of packaged foods, commercial products rather than real sustenance, with an
entertainment factor to their designed exteriors. The types of art works
comprising her Questionable Foods series appear in three distinct versions: as
her own previous sculptures utilizing commercially designed additions as a form
of virus; as food objects covered in a skin of advertisements; and two-dimensional
models of ‘his & hers’ gingerbread cookies with commercials for a direct
exterior. In one case she builds a large strawberry plastered with advertising images
for commercial foodstuffs, as if to say, you want indulgence but here is real
sugar. Clearly, the dynamic between appetite and real hunger is central to the
experience she is metaphorically presenting. The fracture between appearance
and essence has remained constant from the beginning of her career and
continues to inform its making even as she departs from a dynamic of beauty
alone.
The quandary
presented in the Questionable Foods series is not solely premised upon the
obvious, but upon a polemic between nature and culture. This polemic not only
concerns the issues immediately at hand, but the premise of art-making itself.
Nature is essence; it is not only the fruit on the branch but any realization
of it as a means of embodying its symbolic power. The branch is sensual and
palpably real, even as a glass form it retains much of its appeal; reduced to a
sensuous facsimile it serves to provide us with an experience only art can
give. Culture, in artistic terms, refers to those manifestations of commonly
held beliefs that are projected upon the blank canvas, both a subject matter
and a material in and of itself, and in this case because of their commercial
manifestations, imposing an illusory quality of value that is merely greed in
disguise. Eat this food! Drink this soda! It will make you younger, prettier,
richer! It entices with the concept of transformation but ultimately adds
little of real value to our daily existence. The transmission of values that
originated in myth and legend have become cheapened, and metaphorically
foreshortened, by their service to agendas disadvantageous to both health and
truth. The artist looks back into the depths of nature, encouraging mystery.
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