Ellen Shattuck Pierce
FLOOR PLAY
September 3 - October 10
In her exhibit, Floor Play, print media artist, Ellen Shattuck Pierce, recycles linoleum carvings into a tiled floor. While inking linoleum blocks, the artist preferred looking down upon their shiny surfaces more then printing them on paper and placing them on the wall. Her linoleum floor consists of thirty 12 x 12" tiles, each individually pieced together from a fifteen year collection of the artist's used linoleum. "Floor Play" both embraces and subverts traditional ideas of polished kitchen linoleum by providing a glossy and menacingly carved floor. In addition, a suite of six related relief prints are on view.
"My new suite of prints is based on memory. Each line I carve creates a moment of history and is made permanent in the linoleum. I find this process reassuring as nothing will be lost; each thought is there and will remain there waiting to be printed again. I am obsessive and have saved every piece of linoleum I have carved over the past seventeen years. I am attached to each piece, whether it is successful or not, because it is a part of me and my journey as an artist.
In my new work, I have cut these old carvings and collages them together. The previous intent od the marks is subverted into something new. The fragmented pieces come together to make a landscape, a map, a puzzle... There is a longing in the prints as the newly made shards of linoleum have been rendered incomplete by my hand. This longing refers to the disjointed, puzzled, and anxious emotions of being a parent/artist/person. WHere am I in all this laundry and respornisibility? Who was I before when I thought I had no time? Memories and thoughts collide together to make up a new history on the page. "
-Ellen Shattuck Pierce