Artist to Artist:
Brenda Colling talks with Ula Einstein
March 10th, 2007
ULA EINSTEIN is an abstract conceptual artist working in several media. Her concerns are burning, branding, scoring, blading, and threading and unbinding. These show up in drawing, sculpture and installation.
Brenda Colling, designer/fiberartist/puppetee, met Ula Einstein
at the opening of her exhibition, Resonance, at Safe-T-Gallery.
BC: Some artists of great talent are almost mute when it comes
to speaking about their work. How do you respond ?
UE: Speaking is easier than writing about it. There are times when I speak with extreme clarity about my work, effortlessly, where my words just pour out. And then there are times, I have no language. But that's not just when having to speak about my work.
BC: How did your artist statement evolve?
UE: Evolve is the operative word. As the work changes, and the ideas and the work become more expansive, the statement gets refined all the time. There is no formal rhetoric. My art is very personal; it is informed by ideas and experiences. This reminds me; I use to be in the performing arts, and at some point you learn your lines, and they are repeated each night, but how you use them has to remain fresh every performance.
each performance requires fresh inspiration. Even after the images are created, we are required to go deep and explore everything, so we can use words to describe. No way 'round it
BC: Could you talk about Threaded Secrets?
UE: Threaded secrets, as well as the drawings with fire, and installation of written words, and streams of spiraling lines, explore writing, alluding to elements of ancient manuscripts and their secrets, concealing, revealing, and how much is undecipherable: it is about the paradox of often feeling hopeless about the futility of communication, and yet the longing for, and the need to express overrides it.
BC: You have created a unique visual language in many of these works.
Are there particular writers who have influenced this process?
UE: No. Writing and reading influence me, as well as music. They all bring shapes and form up in my mind. This is about creating markings. Scoring, branding, imprinting, erasing. I'm first influenced by early cave painting, their "meanings" and who interprets and decides that. We can never know what the ancients really had in mind. All the layers in the works allude to anthropology and archaeology and simply how complex we all are.
BC: What drew you to these simple materials, tyvek, paper etc.?
UE: Simple materials have a way of being less "precious". So there is freedom in my interacting with them. I like to use what is part of our daily life and rituals; often things that are in common to us, transforming and repurposing these materials. I take what's here, and expand what it can be used for. I love paper, it's so forgiving; yet fragile, and there's always t his concern of "will it last?" I take traditional elements and transform them. It's a form of transfusion for me too. Using things that might be for purpose other than intended.
BC: What led you to using fire?
UE: I am a builder, whose work always includes drawing. Fire destroys leaving a strong imprint, but creates space to build anew. It was a progression from thread to human hair to razorblades to fire. Back to the duality. As I burn away I am burning in.
Fire is warmth, heat, passion, destruction, renewal. We need air to breathe, Fire needs air to burn. I see a connection. I love it, it's one of the 4 basic Elements.
BC: What led you to put aside the seductive colors of painting
and work monochromatically? There is color is some of these works, but mostly
monochromatic. And regardless of absence of color, you have succeeded in creating
deep work that ask questions, with barely any color. That is very rare.
UE: I guess you're saying that without color, the work must be substantial. There is nothing to hide behind. It's a challenge I set up for myself. How could I get to the quintessence? Whatever you bring in, has to add something.
BC: When did you begin using tyvek?
UE: I was in DC looking at art over a weekend.. In the neighborhood I stayed, there were a lot of houses all in the process of being built. They were all wrapped in tyvek, prior to completion. It is the last layer before the brick is placed. This industrial protective layer inspired me. It reminded me of the comparison between people and houses; we too have our protective layer around us. Does it protect us, or does it keep us from letting life in? Tyvek is thin and hearty, and resistant to the elements; it could be pierced and poked. To let something out, allows something let in.
BC: Can we talk about your sphere/shell/skull/ membrane pieces?
UE: I am investigating the interior, and how that affects surface. These are all circular shaped, as in vessels, all fragments, to almost full spheres. They are site specific. The installation is part of the process. All the pieces are created in the studio and the completed work only happens on site. These installations are created according to the space allotted. Densely, or sparely, it changes each time. I'm playing with the liquidity and non-static elements of life. These pieces explore both surface and containment. There's an ambiguity I create all with Line, MarkMaking and Circles.
Universal shapes.
BC: Would you expand on that idea?
UE: My work is about futility and hope. There's an incubation. To be in a shell is waiting to be born. Struggle and hope. Empty and full. In mapping the terrain, there is metamorphosis and transformation. Positive and negative space are not just formal concerns, they are ways we perceive things.
The work unfolds, I love to create installations in a site-specific way, it's very organic, and I surrender to the accident. I welcome it.
“Resonance” is on view at Safe-T-Gallery,
111 Front St. Gallery 214 In DUMBO (Brooklyn)
through March 31st,Wed - Sat. 12-6 Thurs. 12 - 8, Wed - Sat. 12-6 Thurs. 12 - 8
She will also have an installation at Realform Project Space in Williamsburgh in May.
http://www.SafeTgallery.com
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