Loren Eiferman

Wood sculpture: 'Ashes to Ashes/25r'

2023

Eiferman invite’s you to immerse yourself in a world where transformed shapes, lines, and colors are all crafted out of nature's detritus. The inspiration for her drawings come from ...

Eiferman invite’s you to immerse yourself in a world where transformed shapes, lines, and colors are all crafted out of nature's detritus. The inspiration for her drawings come from ...

I want the viewer to have a sense of wonder and awe when looking at my work. We have all at one point or another picked up a stick from the ground—touched the wood, peeled the bark ...

I want the viewer to have a sense of wonder and awe when looking at my work. We have all at one point or another picked up a stick from the ground—touched the wood, peeled the bark ...

Sherry Owens Grandfather's Land, 2021 Bronze, patina, crepe myrtle, paint, wax 30 x 46 x 18 inches For over 30 years, sculptor Sherry Owens has used the sinewy crepe myrtle tree to tell her story of the Texas landscape, death, renewal, beauty, and of today’s growing environmental concerns. Remnants of personal stories, visions and observations in nature are the driving forces in her work. She believes that what we see and do in our daily lives leaves a mark on our planet. It is the direct impact of human activities on the natural world, which is visualized in her artistic practice. She creates connections with nature using crepe myrtle trees found along the side of the road. Each stick is hand-carved and cut to fit, then laid in place and secured with a small myrtle peg. What takes precedence in the laborious process is the importance of detail and evidence of the artist’s hand and her interaction with the materials. Sherry Owens is a native Texan, currently living and working in Dallas, TX. She received a BFA from Southern Methodist University. Recent Texas solo exhibitions include The Grace Museum; Cris Worley Fine Arts; Martin Museum of Art; Art Museum of Southeast Texas; and a two-person site-specific installation at the Umlauf Sculpture Garden & Museum. She was also included in recent exhibitions at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, TX and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, LA. She has exhibited internationally in Austria, Denmark, Germany, Greece, India, Japan, Peru, and Turkey. Her work is currently on view in the Ground Zero 360 Remembrance Exhibition at the Museum of Biblical Art...

Linda Stein, Explorer 184 - Wood, Metal, Mixed Media Contemporary Sculpture In the 1980s, Linda Stein began a series called Ceremonial Scepters, where she imagined an excavation by...

Linda Stein, Afterlife 164 - Wood, Metal, Stone, Mixed Media Contemporary Sculpture In the 1980s, Linda Stein began a series called Ceremonial Scepters, where she imagined an exca...

Over many decades Loren Eiferman has created and mastered a unique technique of working with wood—her primary material. First, she begins with a drawing of an idea. Then she takes a daily walk in the woods surrounding her studio and collects tree limbs and long sticks that have fallen to the ground. She never chops down a living tree or uses green wood. Eiferman allows the wood time to cure in the studio to make sure it won’t check or crack. Next, she debarks the branch and looks for shapes found within each piece of wood. Using a Japanese hand saw, she cuts and connect these small shapes together using dowels and wood glue. Then, all the open joints get filled with a home made putty, which is then sanded so she can see the newly formed shapes. This process is until the new sculpture appears like the original line drawing but in space. She wants the work to appear as if it grew in nature, when in fact each sculpture is composed of over 100 small pieces of wood that are seamlessly jointed together. Her work can be called the ultimate recycling: taking the detritus of nature and giving it a new life. We have all at one point or another picked up a stick from the ground—touched the wood, peeled the bark off with our fingernails. Her work taps into that same primal desire of touching nature and being close to it. Trees connect us back to nature, back to this Earth. Her work has a meditative quality to it—a quiet, calming energy. Her influences are many; from looking at nature and plant life on this Earth to researching the heavenly bodies in the images beamed back from the Hubble Telescope. From studying ancient Buddhist mandalas and designs to delving deeper into quantum physics. And from researching mysterious manuscripts to studying the patterns inside our brains. For Invocation, we are exhibiting her newest body of work, inspired by the illustrations found in the Voynich Manuscript. This 250-page book, is believed to have been written in the early 15th century, of a mysterious origin and purpose. Written in an unknown language and currently housed at Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book Library, the manuscript has eluded all attempts in the intervening centuries to decode or decipher its purpose and meaning. This enigmatic book is divided into 6 different sections (herbal, astronomical, biological, cosmological, pharmaceutical and recipes). Having discovered the images contained in this codex over the Internet, Eiferman felt an immediate, profound and inexplicable connection to this manuscript and its creator. The artist is currently transposing the “herbal” section of manuscript into sculptures. This section has drawings in it of plants and flowers that do not really exist in nature—past or present. These aren’t just pretty images of flowers—they also contain the wacky root systems and seemingly out of proportion leaves, stamens and pistils. Loren Eiferman was born in Brooklyn, NY. She received her BFA from SUNY Purchase. Her work has been exhibited extensively throughout the Tri-State region including gallery and museum exhibitions in the Hudson Valley and Connecticut. Her work is included in numerous corporate and private art collections. In 2014 she was awarded a NYC MTA Arts & Design art commission to produce steel railings...