MARVELLOUS

Friday, March 16, 2012

The Fool's Journey

In the tarot The Fool symbolizes the beginning of a journey. He sets off to explore without knowing what lies ahead. He isn’t a fool in the sense of a buffoon, rather one who proceeds on an adventure in spite of his lack of experience. To confront the unknown; the accumulation of knowledge; transformation from ignorance to wisdom; moving from one place to another, whether physical or psychical, are aspects of The Fool’s Journey.

I will be in this exhibition, opening on April Fool's Day!

If you're in town, please feel free to join me for the opening party:

Sunday April 1st, 1-3pm

Curious Matter Gallery

272 Fifth Street, Jersey City, NJ

Exhibition runs April 1st to May 20th 2012.

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

A Little Bit of This and That...

Last Sunday night we took down Swoon's giant Thelassa install at the Children's Museum of the Arts in Manhattan. The kids had taken a few of their own creative liberties with the piece so we spent the following day repairing her and bringing her back to her original glorious state. She has recently been acquired by some lucky collector but I'm glad the kids got to have her company first!

I've decided to revisit my big peony after a 6 month "I hate this artwork!" tantrum. I'm experimenting with different papers and have decided to hand print her instead of using a press - to bring out more of the 'energy' I want from her. Sometimes I find printing with a press can subdue or devitalize the carving of a linoleum block. Your drawing must really be superb to stand on its own once it has passed through the mechanics of a printing press and my peony has a little too much 'mussy' style for that. Hand printing allows her to show off her scruffy qualities with unapologetic charm, and I like her for that.

This is a little sneak peek at the first image from my series about plants which energetically or medicinally affect the way you dream. This one is about nightmares and the plants used to soothe night terrors. It's a 'reduction' or 'suicide' print where you carve away each layer of colour after you've printed it, until the block (and original drawing) will be gone. This process has been fighting me since the beginning. I didn't have enough experience to print this image well and, as usual, in my gung-ho optimism I failed to recognize it's technical difficulty. Only during my fourth colour did I realize I was swimming in a sequence of problems I had no ability to solve. The size of my block, the colours I'm using, the intricacy of my image and my inexperience with this registration and printing method all became a battle I was almost about to lose. However after much counselling from expert professional help, I have learnt a mountain of new information and think it'll actually come together in the end.

These were just the newsprint proofs and my final print will look nothing like this, but there's something about the raw charm of these which I think gives them a life of their own. I've been messing around with various painted backgrounds and collage arrangements, and really enjoying the looseness of these originally 'throw-away' proofs. It's still a soupy mess on my studio wall but the atmosphere is really starting to emerge and this encourages me to proceed with the more finicky and demanding aspects of the formal reduction print process. The final piece will be exhibited at the Robert Blackburn gallery in August.

Sunday, February 12, 2012

Back To The Old House Print Sale!

Rememory, 2012

Now that we have truly begun the Lunar New Year, I've cleared out the cobwebs and given my slightly dusty website a good shine and polish. And to celebrate, I've opened up shop for some of my most popular prints.

Back To The Old House is a body of work I made mostly throughout 2005 to 2007. Inspired by my fascination with abandoned houses and the power of used and discarded objects, this collection of images is a romance with the past and a look at the compelling and seductive nature of nostalgia.

Old fragments are the perfect object to singularly manifest both the irretrievable past and the preciousness of the present. What has been lost and what has remained - this sentiment gives the uselessness of a broken fragment a little enigma, a little profound presence. I always admire the way a piece of junk can suddenly take you to a different place, and house junk is especially evocative when you imagine all the lives lived, families raised, pets loved, dramas unfolded, tragedies, secrets, cups of teas, gossip, friendship, homework, quarrels and fights, new romances, broken hearts, dinners, breakfasts, deaths and births. All taking place inside a world made up of material parts and substances, of which we rarely think about, and yet is the stage for so much of our life.

I have collected some of my favourite fragments and given them their little profound moment.

Please follow this link: Back To The Old House and other work at www.elainesuhui.com

Thank you for your support!

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Four Artists

Here is some work I'd like to share with you, by artists I've come across during my travels through America and Canada. The work I favour lately tends to be curious, bright, witty and lyrical, and the following artists have been memorable to me for these reasons. Is it a coincidence that many artists of Korean descent seem to be catching my eye? On a very basic level there seems to be something about their aesthetic that I'm really drawn to; the high contrasting colours, the humour and sense of playfulness, the delicacy of materials, the beautiful sense of space and composition. But that is a side note. Whatever their background, these artists are brilliantly skilled and clever, thoughtful and emotive, and I respect and admire their work very much.

Taiga CHIBA

http://www.artslant.com/global/artists/show/97097-taiga-chiba

Aurora Wind

Taiga Chiba was born in Shizuoka, Japan, and is now based in Vancouver, Canada. His work has a beautiful sense of space and composition: curious morphing creatures floating, glowing and connecting in mid-air, and suggesting the dynamic, symbiotic relationship of different life forms.

Jee HWANG

http://www.jeehwang.com

I Have Something To Say, 2009

Jee Hwang immigrated to the United States from Seoul, Korea, and is currently based in New York. Her paintings usually represent moments of tension, confusion, longing, awkwardness and social disconnection. I particularly like her self portraits as a cockroach cowering in the corner of a room, an amusing and poignant representation of the strangeness of being in a foreign place. Her style is spare, economical and skillfully rendered, providing an elegant simplicity to her subtle, disconcerting narratives.

Jiha MOON

http://www.jihamoon.com/

Blubber Blobber, 2005

Jiha Moon lives and works in Atlanta, Georgia. Her dreamy, seductive paintings on handmade hanji paper are filled with geography, weather patterns, and symbolic cultural imagery from Korea, China, Japan and the United States. Her work is playful and brilliantly executed, confidently flaunting bright contrasting colours which manifest into fantastic utopic visions.

Crystal MOREY

http://crystalmorey.com/

Heart In Hands, 2011

Crystal Morey is a Bay Area artist who works primarily in ceramic sculpture. Her figures are usually heavily lidded, strangely reverential beings with contemplative, melancholic and yearning expressions. Hands and trees are recurring motifs in her small busts, which peer out from walls or emerge from leaves with faraway, wistful looks in their eyes; their postures reminiscent of religious allegories or metaphoric fairy tales.

Monday, January 9, 2012

Published By The Artist

Happy new year everyone!

I will be part of this benefit exhibition at the International Print Center of New York from January 19-21st. All works will be for sale priced at $300 or less and the proceeds will be shared equally by the artist and IPCNY. Lots of big names will be featured so you could come away with a real steal!

Closing party is on January 21st, 7-10pm.

Published By The Artist
International Print Center of New York
508 West 26th Street, 5th floor
11am - 6pm

Saturday, September 17, 2011

Aussie Print Workshop Show

Me and my friends are in this show at the Australian Print Workshop from 24th September - 12th November 2011. The party will be on October 8th, from 2-4pm.

I made a new piece especially for the show because I'm really grateful to the APW for the vital support they gave me while I was in Australia. They gave me a scholarship so I could use their studio for a year, an exhibition, and then helped me get an Ian Potter Cultural Trust grant so I could come to America! And some of the APW artists I met during my scholarship have become some of my dearest friends.

The piece is called 'Plant Medicine Dreaming'. It's a watercolour monotype with papercut collage.

Plant Medicine Dreaming, 2011
copyright Elaine Su-Hui Chew

The Australian Print Workshop is at 210 Gertrude Street, Fitzroy, Melbourne, Australia.
www.australianprintworkshop.com

Friday, August 19, 2011

The Transformazium

This abandoned church in Braddock, Pennsylvania, was donated to Swoon and will become a cultural center called the Transformazium once renovations are complete.

Swoon mermaid papercut

The church has lost all it's stain glass windows, but Callie has replaced them with her own artwork.

Boarded up doorway filled with artwork

Boarded up windows decorated with Swoon papercuts

I came to Braddock to help Swoon print her new lino blocks for her installation at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. Her friends were also there, helping her build a sculpture out of bamboo, cardboard and muslin. We used the Transformazium as our workspace. It wasn't easy. There wasn't much light and the air was thick with dust and mould - we couldn't work long hours without feeling achey and tired. We also didn't have running water. I was covered in etching ink for three days solid and when I caught the plane back to New York the security guards laughed at my blackened knees, hands, shoes, and toes.

Sculpture in progress.
This will be installed within a disused elevator shaft alongside a print mural at the ICA.

Scale model of the sculpture

My job in Braddock: to print this giant lino block (approx 11 x 15 feet!) for Swoon's ICA mural.
I was standing at the top of a ladder to get this shot of the block, all inked up and ready to print.

This cheeky, mischievous face belongs to one of Australia's most honourable painters, Mrs Bennett, or Nyurapayia Napitjinpa, whom Callie and I had the privilege to meet on our trip to the Northern Territory earlier this year.

Our printing set-up was on the church stage; the only floor space that was actually flat. I rolled out ink on an old sheet of plexi and we dried the prints from the mezzanine railing because they were so big.
Here Charlie is helping me clean the block.

The first print!
I printed 3 more of these before I left Braddock.

And here was the smaller block...

What a beautiful demon! She was a pleasure to print.
Callie ended up printing 50 more of these for the mural.

The interior view of the church from the stage.
Although the church needs some serious TLC, you can see it's potential for beauty. (I quite like the Biblical mural above the stage with a very authentic brown Jesus.)

A beautiful wall

The last of the stain glass windows

The empty lot across the road also belongs to the Transformazium.
These adobe huts are Callie's practice versions of the earthquake-proof homes which she later built in Haiti.

And this was the final mural installed in Boston!

Swoon's installation is called 'Anthropocene Extinction' and will be on show from September 3rd until December 30, 2012 at The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston.

For more information on the exhibition, follow this link: Swoon: Anthropocene Extinction

And for more information about the Transformazium, follow this link: TRANSFORMAZIUM!!!