Elizabeth Ellenwood
Liz was our very first featured artist! We're so happy to have launched the site with her wonderful works!
Featured Artist February 2016
Building Study
Elizabeth Ellenwood’s photographs should be considered in their entirety, for each series builds upon previous work in a climb towards distilling the elements of light, line, shadow, and breaking architectural elements down to their most essential forms. In the vein of the American Modernists, Liz finds beauty in the everyday, which she has done in skillful projects capturing architectural skylines, telephone wires, and the vernacular objects of a daily routine. Liz has the enviable ability to make even the most mundane object fascinating and to distort recognizable elements so we look at them with fresh eyes. Each series has built upon a need to capture an unwieldy subject and transform it into a lasting composition, prizing the elements of light and line, which culminates in a project like Building Study.
In these selected ten images, disparate views come together to form a picture of the whole. Liz mentions that the “entirety” of the building was one of the elements that drew her to composing a series rather than a single image, and each view is captured from a different angle, adding layers of complexity. Occasionally patches of sky appear to orient the viewer, and the small figure in the foreground of Building Study #12 serves as a coda to ground us after a dizzying architectural exploration. As a viewer, we leave the series without knowing if we have seen the building in its entirety, but that doesn’t seem to matter, for you have to appreciate (and be content with) the air of mystery that the intricacies of each composition leave behind.
- Jessica Roscio, Curator at Danforth Art
Focusing on basic elements of artline, shape, form, texture I found perspectives that allowed these details to interact dynamically. I looked for the repetition of geometric shapes and compression of forms to create a confusion of depth and scale in my compositions.
Building Study
On a trip to Munich, Germany I visited the BMW Museum and was immediately mesmerized by the entirety of the building. Everywhere I looked there were abstract shapes and light reflecting off glass and slick steel. My eyes wandered the beautiful modern architecture and compelling subject matter searching for a way to capture its intensity. After walking around the building several times I decided one or two images would not be enough; I wanted to create a portfolio of graphic studies. Focusing on basic elements of artline, shape, form, textureI found perspectives that allowed these details to interact dynamically. I looked for the repetition of geometric shapes and compression of forms to create a confusion of depth and scale in my compositions. While printing the photographs in the darkroom, I focused on the gradation of tones to recreate the feeling of the natural light bouncing off the contemporary structure. Each silver gelatin print represents the playful visual maze of architecture found at the museum.
-Elizabeth Ellenwood