Featured Artist Elisabeth Fitzhugh

Featured Artist Elisabeth Fitzhugh uses discovered objects to create new realities. She de-constructs and re-constructs junk and memorabilia to create assemblages. See her website for more about this artist.

 

 

BITS & PIECES of the world speak to me.  At times I sense their messages. Other times they hold mystery. They want to deconstruct & reconstruct, combine & recombine in a dance of message and mystery.  This world is  populated with symbols, goddesses, beings of possibility, the fun and fanciful.    I am led by the need to express and I am inspired by the grandest art and respected artists and the bits of American culture found in the Dollar store, Ebay and junk shop.  Outsider art? Naive?  Folk?  No need to classify.

 

 

I experience creating art as a personal dialogue with the Universe and everything in it.  The world speaks to me and I am moved to gather it in and re-express what has come to me.  I don’t know if I understand the All’s messages, but I allow myself to follow the energy and express ‘me’ through what comes to me.  My life has held many focuses but art is the one aspect that is always present.  I have worked in the corner of a bedroom, in a custom built free-standing studio to my current studio in my crowded but ample basement.

 

 

I am most attracted to art that emerges from that which already exists.  How often have we looked at something broken or fading and thought of a way we could fix it up, change it, make it new?  And isn’t there often the sense that the very thing, the old building or piece of furniture or odd cup and saucer in a junk store is calling to you, letting you alone see the potential waiting for your energy to renew life?

My years of collecting magazines for collage now has been expanded by the vastness of the world wide web, digital design and Photo Shop alterations, but working with found objects is still my deepest passion.  I particularly enjoy making collages for other people, finding images and symbols that I feel reflects important aspects of them.

 

 

I seem to have two styles of working – the inner driven and the inspired.  Naturally, these styles often overlap.  The’ inner driven’ pieces are those I use to express or come to understand, deeper emotional issues or situations in my life.  Over The Abyss and Despair are good example of this, as they really capture the personal energy I was working with at the time.

 

 

‘Inspired’ pieces are assemblages or collages that don’t have such specific personal meaning driving them.  The Alpha & Numeral Girls series began when I found a cache of the 7″ dolls at the dollar store.  In the first assemblage, I was drawn to put letter on the dolls using a rubber stamp.  I liked the sense of the dolls being a ‘crew’ and the element of the Alpha Girls traveling or doing things.  I was drawn to put numbers on the next box and the Alpha/Numeral girls became an ongoing theme. I typically remove the hair and eyebrows of dolls, which I feel makes them more like ‘beings’ that dolls.  In a similar way, the altered shoes are another ongoing theme.  The shoes seems to reflect different aspects of women.

 

 

Doll heads and parts have consistently attracted me because of the essence I sense within them of  ‘expectations not yet formed’ . For my altered dolls, I usually replace the head with a found object.  This in itself transforms the piece from a ‘doll’ into another object altogether, into an art doll.  I made a series of elvin dolls by using air-dry clay over the doll head to create altered beings.

 

 

I work mostly by myself but have enjoyed collaborative times with others – sometimes on join pieces and others in sharing the studio together.  I now live in a small town in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia and so far, my art hasn’t found a place here, but the Web offers a home to the varied and different.

 

I find I can talk about some elements I sense in my art –exploring personal emotions, archetypes, vintage, retro and pop images.  Yet I really can’t fully explain my attraction to the pieces I gather for my art and  what moves me how to combine, alter and embellish as I do.  And I like the mystery not knowing.  I like to go in the studio and just gather this and that into a piece.  I often have several pieces in various states or idea or construction.  I like to create what I call a ‘contained’ collage – going through boxes of images or magazines and pasting into the collage each images as I find it.  No thinking, planning, or rearranging – just going with what attracts me in that moment.  I simply like dancing between realms, listening to inner music meeting outer things and discovering where it takes me.