Eleanor Seeley
These are some representative pieces. Please visit Trinidad Art Gallery for available pieces.
|
As Dostoevsky so relevantly said, “Beauty will save the world - Man thirsts for beauty." Good art, excellent art—even bad art—gives us a portal to what is beautiful. I make art because it is the same as thinking, sleeping, and breathing, a compelling automaticity.
My life has been filled with both teaching and making art. After teaching for fifteen years, I began my Master’s degree in Art Education, at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee. The encouragement came from a stellar character reference written by a critic who had seen me in action. Through this, I discovered intelligence comes in different forms. Mine just happens to be in a three-dimensional creative process. |
On my 60th birthday in 2001, I met a famous sculptor from San Francisco. This was a breakthrough moment. For years, I had the feeling that perhaps, in a long-ago lifetime, I was involved with sculpture during the period of the Renaissance. Feeling the need to do some serious exploration, I began a rather lucid time of working in clay that eventually evolved into a series of bronze figures (see website: sculpturewoman.com The First Women Series).
With this series, I had accomplished my lifelong dream of sculpture. My models were any woman I had ever scrutinized, each sculpture that I made epitomizing the absolute elation and joy found in a dance with the Divine, lost in this fusion.
In 2008, I began a two-year period as artist in residence at Westhaven Center for the Arts in Trinidad California. The first year saw further exploration into the female form in resin (sculpturewoman.com - A Silent Opera of Nine Women). The second year was a complete and unexpected divergence. Elves emerged, elemental beings possessing magical powers and given to capricious interference in human affairs.
I enjoyed a twelve-year love affair with sculpting, and, as any artist will tell you, working in most forms of art carries with it the liability of exposure to toxic materials. The price I paid was breast cancer. The year was 2014.
The results were complete remission and the question "What to do next?" Paints and any other airborne chemical vapors would compromise my health. Thus began my creating of these present soft-sculptural forms.
I know how to sew, and I love to sew. I had already created an elaborate studio for producing outdoor banners, as well as a business for designing, making, and marketing teddy bears. Making patterns came relatively
easily— and the “Woolly Ones” were born.
Sculpture now has a new profile. My love for the vertebrates of the Earth has expanded. I work only in wool, a completely wonderful and tactile material that surrenders itself into soft sculptural configurations of pure love and substance. So now this phase of the end-time of my life (80 years and counting) is given over to the “Woolly Ones”.
I have to say I fall in love with every “critter” I make. If you are to be a fortunate owner of a “Woolly One”, don’t be surprised if you find yourself in a dialogue (or should I say monologue, since we all know the critter is not going to actually respond to your musings, an illusion of sorts).
Who are the Woolly Ones? Mice, ravens, whales, camels, bears, rabbits, and more, even some who are, even today, aching to come onto the scene.
With this series, I had accomplished my lifelong dream of sculpture. My models were any woman I had ever scrutinized, each sculpture that I made epitomizing the absolute elation and joy found in a dance with the Divine, lost in this fusion.
In 2008, I began a two-year period as artist in residence at Westhaven Center for the Arts in Trinidad California. The first year saw further exploration into the female form in resin (sculpturewoman.com - A Silent Opera of Nine Women). The second year was a complete and unexpected divergence. Elves emerged, elemental beings possessing magical powers and given to capricious interference in human affairs.
I enjoyed a twelve-year love affair with sculpting, and, as any artist will tell you, working in most forms of art carries with it the liability of exposure to toxic materials. The price I paid was breast cancer. The year was 2014.
The results were complete remission and the question "What to do next?" Paints and any other airborne chemical vapors would compromise my health. Thus began my creating of these present soft-sculptural forms.
I know how to sew, and I love to sew. I had already created an elaborate studio for producing outdoor banners, as well as a business for designing, making, and marketing teddy bears. Making patterns came relatively
easily— and the “Woolly Ones” were born.
Sculpture now has a new profile. My love for the vertebrates of the Earth has expanded. I work only in wool, a completely wonderful and tactile material that surrenders itself into soft sculptural configurations of pure love and substance. So now this phase of the end-time of my life (80 years and counting) is given over to the “Woolly Ones”.
I have to say I fall in love with every “critter” I make. If you are to be a fortunate owner of a “Woolly One”, don’t be surprised if you find yourself in a dialogue (or should I say monologue, since we all know the critter is not going to actually respond to your musings, an illusion of sorts).
Who are the Woolly Ones? Mice, ravens, whales, camels, bears, rabbits, and more, even some who are, even today, aching to come onto the scene.
|
|
|
|
|
|
