Kathleen Elliot

NOVEMBER 8 – DECEMBER 19, 2014
Leaves, fruit, seedpods, and flowers are reimagined as new, fantastic varieties of organic life. They become a vehicle for personal expression.

In 2003, Kathleen Elliot began making botanical sculptures, drawing upon plant forms she observed in nature. Four years later, she began an on-going series of imaginary botanicals, which use natural forms, but invent new species, including human/plant hybrids. In a painstaking process, she creates individual forms, colors them with glass powders, combines them into complex compositions, and anneals the entire piece, reducing the stress on the glass. The surface of the sculpture is kept glossy or sandblasted to a low sheen. 

Elliot’s art is informed by her study of applied philosophy, considering the fundamental question of the “the good life.” She has found an answer in the deep human connection to nature. Elliot’s study of alternative spiritual disciplines forms another strong thread in her artistic development. She studied with Carlos Castaneda, who wrote about his encounters with a Yaqui shaman. This experience, and the possibility he raised of other dimensions of reality, led her to create works that reflect a wide range of new expressive possibilities. She asked herself, “I’m making facsimiles of everyday botanical forms, but what would the botany of Castaneda’s alternative reality look like?” 

Each work has its own story and its own meaning and explores a wide range of subjects. Personal growth and development are continuing themes, and a number of pieces have arisen from imagining alternate realities or the emotional phenomena in our lives in botanical imagery. 

Cyclones have emerged as recurrent images, transmuted into both glass and a new species of plant life. No longer destructive and feared, they become gorgeous forms that might grow in a garden, crowned by flowers. The cyclones are a kind of self-portrait, a vortex spinning through life, spiraling upward until it is complete. 

This exhibition is organized through Katharine T. Carter and Associates.