process taking over....

In research for something else I came to the work of NYC artist Elisa D'Arrigo and am super intrigued. She makes gorgeous, often large, sewn structures. In one moment they are a drawing and in another a structural space, and in the next a 3 dimensional map.

Her work deals with ideas of memory, layering, but most importantly process. According to her she starts with some type of memory but the process of making takes over and guides her work towards whatever it becomes. One piece may take months or years to complete.


She selected these quotes from solo shows of hers to talk about her work.

The most important reading finds the artist's desire for extendability- the sense that any given work could continue the gesture of its making, that the composition could extend indefinitely into space, that the light might continue and spread.

-By Stephen Westfall, excerpted from a brochure essay accompanying 2007 exhibition at Elizabeth Harris Gallery.

In her need to find a voice for the silent workings of nature, its slow movement across time, the artist has authored a process rather than a completion of form. Her ever-growing configuration begins small but ends up by being large, in all the meanings of the adjective.

-By Jonathan Goodman, excerpted from a catalogue essay accompanying a 2003 exhibition at the Elizabeth Harris Gallery.

I would love to see her work in person and am hoping that I will get that opportunity in my research. Much of her work is large scale so that can never be properly experience on line.
See more of her work here.