The Paper Crane

In 2009 Eliza Fer­nand came to Chicago to do an instal­la­tion and per­for­mance at 65Grand. A most excel­lent lit­tle gallery space run by Bill Gross.  Since then Ms. Fer­nand has par­tic­i­pated in a mag­i­cal artist in res­i­dence at Else­where Artist Col­lab­o­ra­tive in Greens­boro North Car­olina and now has a new solo show open­ing up at Nationale in Port­land, Ore­gon.  I had the won­der­ful plea­sure of meet­ing Eliza over cof­fee before her show at 65Grand on a visit to Chicago last year. Here are some images of Eliza’s work below from pre­vi­ous shows:

Eliza’s work is an amal­gam of color and tex­tures. She stitches together bril­liantly pat­terned fab­rics into clouds, sta­lac­tites and vol­ca­noes, knits and cro­chets droopy droplets of rain in fuzzy blues, pinks, greens, reds and yel­low. Knots, hangs, floats her soft sculp­tures from ceil­ings and walls or she can even be found hid­ing inside them in a home­made cos­tume to match.

Inside this vol­cano made of fab­ric Eliza is hid­ing inside. Her cos­tume is a bright red body suit encas­ing her body, face and head. She slowly emerges as lava would from a vol­cano. Then begins to rum­ble and swirl about the room inter­pret­ing an eruption.

Rain is not gloomy at all, it is in fact bright and col­or­ful if you live in Eliza Fernand’s world!

Eliza Fer­nand! We love you!

Posted by Dee Clements on Monday, January 11th, 2010 at 4:02 pm. You can follow responses through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.