Exhibition Reviews | Visual Arts

Nature’s Play: The Whimsical Assemblages of Elena Lawrence

A quaint cottage surrounded by large, stylized leaves, crafted from various textured fabrics and materials. The house features wire details and glass elements for windows, set against a background of soft whites and yellows, creating a serene and inviting scene.

Elena Lawrence, “Domaine Du Laundrie,” encaustic, 18 x 24 in.

The main gallery at Phillips is large enough to allow viewing a painting from a moderate distance, a point of view where one current work presents as a charming landscape, featuring a cottage beneath two large trees that resemble tulips. On a clothesline from one of the trees to the house hangs a colorful blanket, while various flowering plants and a picket fence surround it. In the air, lines like cartoon wind lend a feeling of motion to this static scene.

Come a little closer, though, and it’s not a painting at all. Rather, “Domaine Du Laundrie”—the fancy French title means just what it sounds like in English—is an assemblage made from the scraps of fabric and metal junk that the artist, Elena Lawrence, enjoys hunting for. When she finds the right bits, she further delights in embedding them in encaustic wax and resin, forming pictures that coexist in mind and eye with their component parts.

Sometimes she lets her finds suggest a subject; at others, she will turn to the local hardware store for what she needs to complete an idea. The flowers in “Atomic Blue,” which suggest the diagrammatic atoms seen everywhere in the early days of nuclear power, are faucet handles standing on bent strips of sheet metal, surrounded by washers and nuts, all on a background of fiberglass cloth. Here and there, the viewing experience is reversed: larger, found objects protrude from the panel and are seen from a distance for themselves, then the representation emerges on approach.

A mixed media artwork featuring various abstract atomic shapes crafted from metal wires and washers on a textured beige background. The shapes, resembling atomic orbitals, are interspersed with small metallic components, creating a dynamic and intricate visual layout.

Elena Lawrence, “Atomic Blue,” encaustic, 15 x 28 in.

 

Mixed media rural landscape featuring a red house amidst rolling hills, depicted using wire forms and textured materials. The composition includes simplistic representations of trees and sheep, crafted from wire and buttons, set against a background of patterned textiles and subtle colors.

Elena Lawrence, “Swiss Hills,” encaustic, 18 x 24 in.

 

There’s a childlike quality to this game that may discomfit some viewers. Lawrence, who scored magna-cum-laude on her BFA degree, may have come close to having her pleasure spoiled by professionalism: close enough to convince her that, for her, art is first and foremost the playground of imagination. In another landscape, “Swiss Hills,” half of a hinge and a corrugated fastener are visual synecdoches—parts that stand in for the whole—of a chalet. This is sophisticated child’s-play that climaxes in the bits of lace grazing like sheep on a canvas hillside.

Her favorite subjects are plants and animals: an agave in a bowl, a money plant in a coffee mug here, owls with delicate hand tools for faces over there. It would be a shame not to look closely at the textures in both foregrounds and backgrounds. Wax, of course, is everywhere, but while it generally disappears, sometimes it floats a loose fabric in interior space, while in other places it’s been stamped into a character all its own.

Nature is inherent for Elena Lawrence. It begins with the hunt through grounds and gardens for lost bits, primarily of metal. The atmosphere of their patinas and rusts, the deformities they suffer, suggest histories to her. Each represented object then hangs in the balance: background to others lives, but the stars of their own stories. Play like this is serious work, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be fun.

Artistic representation of a whimsical scene with a large-eyed black cat peeking through an assortment of colorful, patterned leaves. The artwork combines stained glass and printed textiles, highlighted by delicate linework and vibrant colors to convey a playful and mysterious atmosphere.

Elena Lawrence, “Plant Peeper,” encaustic, 16 x 20 in.

Elena Lawrence, Phillips Gallery, Salt Lake City, through June 15

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