"My work has been described as "some otherworldly mash-up of quilts and paintings and sculpture and something else altogether."  That "something else" is what I aim to discover through my work process."

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My practice has developed through experimentation with a variety of processes and materials – felt, foil, and now paper.  The play of materials and process, the conversation of materials with form, marks and color: these are my motivations for making art.

 

I approach all of my work as abstract collage: compositions of differing elements that cohere into unique final forms.  I work with layering, contrast, texture, and movement, as well as with mystery -- chance is an essential part of my process.

 

Although my work is always abstract, my inspirations are wide-ranging -- from nature to fashion, world events, even outer space – and mostly hidden.  While some recent work has moved toward narrative abstraction, the primary driver and motivation for my work is my engagement with the materials themselves.

 

My latest work developed from an initial collage in which I experimented with a new set of materials.  In addition to my primary use of printed magazine papers, I have been creating “prepared” papers through rust and tea printing and a solvent process that transforms magazine papers into unexpected prints, none of which allow total control over the results. 

 

I begin a collage by laying down an initial paper and then build it spontaneously from there, “finding” the color palette and compositional focus as I go.  I layer the work with borrowed and original papers, as well as image transfer, ink or acrylic washes, and mark-making with colored pencil or graphite.  

 

All of my recent work is on a support of translucent vellum.  The brittle yet billowy quality of the sheets appeals to me like a skin.  If the sheet buckles with the addition of water-based media, that creates a new texture that I can use.  The translucency allows me to work on both sides of the sheets, enhancing the illusion of depth while offering another opportunity for chance results.  The size and orientation of the supports have become consistent over time and relate to my physical size and working space.  

 

I used to feel constrained about titling my work.  But over the past year I’ve been using image transfers of magazine text as a form of mark-making in the background or field of the collages.  I found myself skimming the text passages for interesting phrases which, out of context, evoke qualities of the collages.  They become my titles.

 

I am a self-taught artist and have always invented my own ways of working.  I first exhibited weavings in museums and galleries as part of the nascent fiber arts movement in the San Francisco Bay Area.  Two series of woven vellum and woven paper collages from 2021 recall that history.  I am also a landscape architect and my work often creates a kind of landscape or topography, as in my shaped foil collages from 2016-18.  

 

I now focus on my art practice full time from my studio in New York’s Hudson Valley.  My award-winning work has been included in dozens of regional shows and in New York City, including  regular showings at the Lockwood Gallery, Kingston.  I was the featured artist at Window on Hudson, in Hudson, New York, with my woven paper installation, “Peekaboo” in 2022.  That year my studio was selected as one of the individual artist studio participants for Upstate Art Weekend.  My collage, “New Alphabet,” was featured on the 2020 issue of the French literature journal, l’esprit createur.  
 

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-- Ellen Jouret-Epstein

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