Thursday, October 22, 2015

Elise Engler: A Year On Broadway October 30 - December 20, 2015 Opening reception: Friday, October 30 from 6-9pm




I spent exactly one year drawing every block of Broadway in Manhattan starting on May 19, 2014 at the Broadway Bridge, just above 221st Street and several days later at Bowling Green and then alternated heading north and south. I finished A Year on Broadway on my corner at Broadway and 107th Street exactly one year later, on May 18, 2015.  There are drawings of the 252 blocks depicting all four seasons including this year’s brush freezing and snowy February and March. (I wasn’t allowed to complain as I was a recipient of the National Science Foundation’s Antarctica Artist and Writer’s Grant several years ago.) On the street I made first layer of drawing/ watercolor and then completed the drawing using colored pencil and watercolors in my studio (with the help of digital images.) I enlisted a passerby to take a picture on me at every location. The final accordion folded drawing is roughly 102 feet long and 6 inches high. The drawing and the photographs will be on exhibit at the gallery.

Monday, April 13, 2015

Paper Jam at Schema Projects, Bushwick, until May 3



Schema Projects, 92 St. Nicholas Ave, Brooklyn, NY.
April 3rd through May 3, 2015

Paper Jam at Schema Projects, curated by Larry Walczak in Bushwick, until May 3.

This drawing, The Garden of Unearthly Dismay,  is part of the exhibition.

Press release below.



The Garden of Unearthly Dismay
gouache, pencil, color pencil on paper 22 x 30" 2015



PAPER JAM: Exploring Visual Strategies for Social Concern
PAPER JAM is a celebration of paper and its use in visual art as well as a collection of socially conscious compositions. Participating artists were encouraged to focus on a current social/political issue that has affected them. The result is a diverse installation of both thought-provoking statements and well-crafted, beautiful artworks.
The artists were invited primarily on the basis of being well informed on current social topics. Additionally, this group represents a variety of different visual disciplines. Nearly all the work in PAPER JAM was created specifically for this exhibition. Artists entered into a dialogue with the curator to select and develop a topical subject appropriate for this show. This approach helped prevent overlap and ensured a coherent installation of the 13 artworks. PAPER JAM features everything from lush watercolors to compositions referencing street-art picture making. This collection of new art aims to re-think the notion that socially conscious art is inherently limited to angry one-note slogans and propaganda in general.
Artworks include Thomas Broadbent’s large watercolor juxtaposing two handguns, one a revolver and the other a toy pistol. Meticulously rendered in lush color, both weapons become surprisingly seductive. . David Pierce offers viewers a comparison of two examples of police headgear: one the cloth hat with visor that completes a cop’s uniform and the other a more contemporary helmet/hat associated with riot gear, showing the transformation of police officer into combat soldier. Pam Butler offers her take on climate change with an extended mixed media composition using street style graphics.  Jim Torok’s cartoonish Jesus image is an obvious reference to the tragedy at Charlie Hebdo in Paris.
Patricia Fabricant’s “Paper Dolls for the  Millennium” address’ the way our apparel affects perceptions, from the Jihadi Bride whose only clothing option isa burka to the Republican party candidate whose sanctimonious attempts to be a mouthpiece for the medical community and the clergy mask a double life.
The painting exhibited in Paper Jam, entitled The Garden Of Unearthly Dismay by Elise Engler, is a compendium of the many of the maladies that have affected our planet in recent times, from political corruption, to ever present surveillance, to disasters of war, to climate change. The myriad of images are superimposed on a landscape very loosely based on Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delight.
Phil Buehler turns police surveillance around by reassembling fragments of shredded paper that he appropriated from the trash of a New York City police precinct.
Aubrey Roemer tells us that the cloth, plastic twine & clothespins are all sourced from Nicaragua. Each painting will be two-sided. I have the rendered portrait facing one side and as ghostly Mono-print created by the painting affixed to the back. This way you see literal and abstract-the mono-print looks like a portrait exploding out of blood-much like cutters die from CKDnT. The seven images are from a series of twenty-three cloth portraits of men  who died from CKDnT. In a town (Chichagalpa) of over 50,000. There have been 10,000 deaths from this disease.  The 20 something paintings are representative of the 20% of the population that have died.
Michael Waugh’s piece utilizes decorative motifs derived from 19th century etchings on top of a cobalt-hued watercolor. Waterboarding is literally a subtext in this piece-as the image itself is composed entirely out of text copied from the recent US Senate report on the CIA’s interrogation program and the extra legal site set up by the agency, code named SITE COBALT.
Brent Ridge’s work-on-paper is titled “In God We Trust” and offers the viewers a political style poster graphic with praying hands.
Larry Walczak’s HEROES & VILLIANS showcases 21different portraits via American trading and/or bubblegum cards. It features politicians, celebrities, atheletes, and even costumed heroes in a gallery of faces that begs the viewer to select the Hero or Villian..or can one be both? This artwork also questions the very nature of photographic documentation in contemporary art.
Ellie Murphy’s “Stolen 276/365″ is a work on paper made as a tribute to the abducted schoolgirls of Chibok, Nigeria. This astounding incident—the female students were taken from their school while taking their final exams—is a sad act of violence which also points to the important issue of the right of every woman and girl to an education, a right we often take for granted. This tribute coincides with the one-year anniversary of the abduction. 219 girls have yet to return.

PAPER JAM attempts to create a visual dialogue regarding current domestic and global issues. If it raises consciousness in just one viewer I will consider this exhibition a success.
The exhibition is hosted by Schema Projects, 92 St. Nicholas Ave, Brooklyn, NY.
April 3rd through May 3, 2015
Opening reception Friday, April 3 6-9pm
eyewash is an independent migratory gallery founded by Larry Walczak in 1997 in a tenement building in Williamsburg, Bklyn. eyewash has organized exhibitions in Newark, Philadelphia, Gent, Belgium & Berlin.

Sunday, March 29, 2015

Exhibition opens at Handwerker Gallery, Ithaca College








My exhibition Taxing Times opened at the Handwerker Gallery, at Ithaca College on March 17. I was there last week to give a talk. The link that holds all the work together is the fact that all the work has relationship to tax paying. There are drawings from the earlier Tax-–onomies series. where I made drawings documenting how tax money is spent. There is also the Antarctica work, where the expedition was paid for by tax dollars through the National Science Foundation’s Antarctica Artist and Writer’s Program.

In addition there is one new work made especially for the exhibition. Missing or Sold was made in response to a request from gallery director Mara Baldwin to document the college’s missing work.  In October, during Ithaca College’s  parent weekend, gallery attendees were handed a registrar's folder that contained a description and sometimes a photo of a piece of art that went missing or was sold from the college's collection (in the 80's ) when the college art museum was sold. The parents, siblings, students, and faculty then made a color pencil drawing on. 4 x 6" card. I redrew all of the 300 drawings on a ghost image of the sold museum building (Boardman House.) the gallery director then made a poster from my drawing so the collection lives on.













Monday, February 2, 2015

I will be giving a Public Lecture at the Explorer's Club Monday February 9!


The Explorer’s Club
NYC - Public Lecture Series
Elise Engler
February 09, 2015        6:00 pm Reception, 7:00 pm Lecture
Club Headquarters, 46 E 70th Street, New York, NY, 10021

Unpacking Antarctica


This event will be streamed live. Please visit our Live Stream page at 7pm on the evening of the event to view the lecture for free.

Member Ticket price:     Free

Guest Ticket Price:      $20

Student Ticket Price: Free for EC Student Members, $5 w/ valid Student ID

Reservation Notes:  Reservations are allotted on a first-come, first served basis.

To secure a reservation, call us at 212.628.8383 or email us at reservations@explorers.org.
https://explorers.org/events/detail/nyc_public_lecture_series_feat._elise_engler