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Founded in 1912, the Newport Art Museum is one of the oldest continuously operating and most highly regarded art museums and schools of its kind in the country.
The Newport Art Museum’s collection consists of approximately 3,000 works of art in a range of media including works on paper (prints, drawings, watercolors, and photographs), paintings, sculptures, decorative arts, installation works, and textiles and is expanding to include new media. Concentrated on American art and contemporary art, the Museum’s collection includes works of art from the 18th century to present.
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A Message for Those Who Will Listen, 2020, Mixed Media, Q Tips, Courtesy of the Artist.
Visit Ellen Schiffman’s website
Instagram: @ellenschiffmanfiber
Hi, I am Ellen Schiffman, I am from Connecticut. I call myself a mixed-media artist. For many years the work I did was primarily focused on fiber art techniques, so there was a lot of weaving, felting, quilting, stitching in the pieces. In more recent years I’ve really branched out a lot and consider myself more of a mixed-media artist. I see myself as an explorer of material, and the piece in this show is a good example of that.
It’s from a series of sculptural work that are all made with q-tips. There is material I used to make the forms but the material you’re seeing is q-tips which I finish off with a varnish so that the cotton won’t absorb the dirt in the air. I really like transforming materials, and using very common materials and transforming them into very unexpected pieces. I’ve used a lot of different materials in my work: plants, rusted items, found items, linen. I tend to work in series.
The series you’re seeing in the show I made in preparation and after a bucket trip to Patagonia. My husband and I went on a trip we’d always dreamed about. The pieces are inspired by the massive white glaciers and ice and empty spaces that we saw there. When I set out to make a piece I don’t say, “this is what the piece is going to be,” and, “this is what it’s going to be about,” its a very instinctual process-oriented experience for me. This one was but I realized afterwards that it was very inspired by what is happening to the glaciers around the world and to our Earth.
It’s called A Message for Those Who Will Listen. You’ll see in the piece that there is a very intact section of the piece and then it is just crumbling and falling apart. There is that message there although I didn’t set out to make that message, but that’s what happened. The other pieces in the series, you can see on my website, are also monumental, all-white pieces with periods of destruction in them. I am fascinated by destruction and resilience and the perfection in imperfection. That has certainly got a voice in this piece.