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Art: Elizabeth Ann James, Columnist
March 2006

www.lizjamesartscene.blogspot.com
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Dreams of Earth and Sky at Camelot Cellars:
Diverse work of Kim Elliott and Elizabeth Harris

March and April bring two complementary but diverse artists to the gallery at Camelot Cellars, 958 N. High St. Columbus-based Kim Elliott paints marvelous narratives in oils. Working from Florida, Elizabeth Harris has fabricated celestial art quilts. The two artists have entitled this eco-friendly show, “Dreams of Earth and Sky.” Camelot Gallery exhibits the work of Ohio Art League artists; Suzanne Byrd, herself an accomplished painter, is the OAL curator for shows at Camelot.

Kim Elliott's Art
Although she graduated from Harvard cum laude, Kim Elliott is a self-taught painter. She paints in oils, and, thus far, all of her work is figurative, representational. Her composition, sometimes simple, sometimes complex, is always balanced and effective. Her colors dance well together whether they are “hot”or neutral.

To my thinking Elliott’s paintings can be divided into two categories or emphases. First, there are the detailed and vivid works which evoke a story and seem ready to leap off the canvas. Second, there are the minimal, neutral-toned works which, if you give them a chance, have an instant impact, like a zen strike.

Our Lady of Lake Michigan

Our Lady of Lake Michigan, by Kim Elliott.

Our Lady of Lake Michigan fits into the second category. In 2002, Elliott was awarded an Artist in Residence Fellowship by the National Park Service, Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. The painting of Our Lady was inspired by that poignant experience. Elliott’s mother was diagnosed with brain cancer during the time of the residency. The lake and the dunes were there to sustain and inspire the artist.

The painting is around 30 x 40 inches. A lavender-rose sun rises, or sets, on the softly defined horizon of the vast flat-painted lake. Our Lady stands, as did her famous Son, on the lake’s surface, her feet planted on a discarded tire, smack dab in the middle of the lake! She does not wear the sumptuous blue robes of St. Bernadette’s Lady. Instead, she’s attired in blue jeans, sport shoes and a familiar plaid shirt. Her long hair is soft and dark. One of her hands is raised, crooked in an elbowy blessing. She and the lake dominate the painting. Trout and walleye lift their heads. Elliot explains, “These creatures are beseeching her; the lake is polluted.”

In the distance, on three sides, the artist has painted, like a miniature railroad town, the remains of an urban landscape. The factory and the nuclear plant smaller than a baby’s fist, an assortment of highrise buildings clustered off at the city’s core. “Back there, is Chicago,” the artist says.

The painting resonates with unabashed sincerity. Colors are non-shiny. Soft blues, grays, purples dominate. Our Lady is not a fashion model, but a slim and determined outdoors woman. Her yellow halo is evident, yet opaque, unglittered. This painting, skillfully executed, retains a sincere “amateur” quality that is startling. Our Lady proves the artist’s mettle: Elliott has dared to paint her vision, come what may.

Yellow Brick Road

Looking for the Yellow Brick Road, by Kim Elliott.

Trips on the Chicago El inspired Looking for the Yellow Brick Road. Again, composition and color are simple. The overall effect is that of ennui, sterility. Beige is the dominant hue. The bare-floored room is almost empty except for a small TV. A nondescript coffee table holds an empty bottle and a cigarette pack. Invisible Mom watches TV; her legs rest ing on the vinyl footstool. The small African American, probably under ten, wears shorts, a shirt and blazing white socks and shoes. He’s as clean and bright and shiny as a new penny while he stares out the hall window. There he can see a low row of apartments, above them, treetops, beyond that, a writhing yellow brick road – and even higher, an Emerald city dances like a green dragon. The painting strikes home in a flash.

The Bride’s Dream and The Grand River Hotel
Elliott has long studied Jung and Freud; she believes in the importance of dreams. Her paintings often begin with a dream-image. Between Heaven and Earth, a 48 x 60 inch painting in which the veiled and gowned bride floats above the tuxedoed groom holding her hand, began with a dream image, “a gauzy woman floating.” This is one of Elliott’s ornate and vivid paintings. The wedding cake, the wedding guests, the compote and desserts, have been rendered in bright, delicious detail.

Paradise River is for certain a visionary piece. God is the proprietor of the Grand River Hotel; the luscious surroundings resemble a rain forest and flow like a river. The many vivid details are charming. In Elliott’s “peaceable kingdom” strange flowers and birds abound, and retirees and exotic animals live in harmony. Elliott studied and copied exotic plants and birds at the Franklin Park Conservatory in order to paint this allegorical work.

An Artist’s Life
Elliott is a voracious reader. Conrad’s Heart of Darkness remains a seminal influence, and Annie Proulx’s The Shipping News is a current favorite. She and her husband Chip Elliott, a professional writer, travel widely. They love Puerto Rico, and they attend Latino dances at various spots in Columbus. Kim loves jazz and early music. She began art by making dolls. Cloth mermaids and Spanish dancers decorate her Clintonville home. Elliott, in a vein similar to Emily Dickinson, recalls, “On Sundays, my church was the ravine.” Now the daily practice of Tai Chi provides her with the strength required from a demanding life. Still healing from her mother’s death, Kim has started planning a new series.

Although she eschews labels, Elliott’s reluctant description of her own work seems apt: “Visionary, contemporary.” Her art was juried into the Ohio State Fair in 2005, and in 2004 with the International Juried Art Exhibition, Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption, Covington, Kentucky.

Directors, curators and faculty of a number of museums have chosen her work for awards and/or inclusion in juried exhibitions.

Elizabeth and Baba Yaga

Fractured Gloaming, 11 1/4 x 10" art quilt by Elizabeth M. Harris

Florida-based art quilter Elizabeth Harris plans to attend her opening at Camelot on March 4. Harris’s list of juried shows is also impressive. She earned her Ph.D. in Botany from Louisiana State University in 1991, and her understanding of earth-based traditions is evident in her quite contemporary quilt art.

In August 2005, The Transit of Venus, was awarded First Place at the SOHO (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory) Competition.

Nocturnal Sojourn, 35 x 74 inches, is fabricated on and against heavy black fabric. Black backgrounds, spiffily stitched or unstitched, serve as an identifying mark for Harris. Black equals night; black also represent’s magic, or the Jungian Shadow. In general, Harris’s work reflects traditional symbols. Yet, it is contemporary in aesthetic, in its minimalism.

Harris is adept at using geometric shapes. Nocturnal Sojourn is “about” the quirky Russian witch/grandmother Baba Yaga. The pocked and stitched triangles run in rows, smaller at the top and larger toward the bottom. These shapes may be haystacks, huts, or triangles. White as a scythe moon or chicken bones, the little hut and the chicken feet and the macabre fence, and a skeleton dance toward the bottom. And as I recall, there’s a knife-sharp crescent floating toward the top. Suns, triangles, and spirally points make Harris’s art mysterious and beautiful.

In her own statement she says, “The celestial theme resonates with and inspires me. One piece just leads to another and the suns keep coming.”

Additional information and images of art quilts by Harris can be found on her Web site www.celestialtextiles.com

Camelot Cellars, 958 N. High Street. 614-441-8860. Hours: Tues-Thurs 1-9pm, Fri-Sat Noon - 10pm.

 

 

More Art and Botany: Our Turn Now at Ohio Craft
From Ohio State University, botany professor Andi Wolfe shines in a magnificent exhibit at the Ohio Craft Museum, “Our Turn Now: Artists Speak Out in Wood,” which includes approximately 30 nationally and internationally recognized artists, will be showing through March 19 in the Museum at, 1665 W. Fifth Ave.

Through technical wizardry, Wolfe has sculpted/turned a tiara and sprays of maple leaves from actual maple wood. They’re gorgeous. One sculpture is entitled, appropriately, Dylan’s Song, in which reddish Ohio maple leaves are “blowing in the wind.” The entire show is a don’t miss.

Feel free to log on to my site at www.lizjamesartscene.blogspot.com for a review of “Women’s Work x 2,” held in February at Northwood ArtSpace. Featured in the exhibit were mixed media works by Arlene Cox Teal and Marilyn Gray Jones.

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