Elizabeth Atterbury, 'Night Comes In'

About

Night comes in.  It is a time of yielding and a time of awakening.  It is a primal time.  A time to do things to keep from slipping away…rhythmic, repetitive, non-cerebral acts of ritual and rite.  

Sustaining Atterbury’s use of personal iconographies, glyphs, and forms, much of the work in this exhibition has been created during the artist’s pregnancy with her second child.  In many ways this moment offers a timestamp, marking a specific period of mental space during physical occupancy.  

The objects in this exhibition clasp at a rhythmic and repetitive nature.  'Long Life (Noodle Bowl),' a sculptural rendering of the decorative form commonly found on the painted glazing of rice/noodle bowls, is displayed as one long seemingly continuous form, while in actuality, it is comprised of multiple individual hand cut wood components.  Two table top surfaces host forms that have come into existence over time: a wooden bowl filled with ashes, bronze chops seated heavily, sand covered glyphs, their surface supple and rough.  Strands made of sanded peach pits similar to prayer beads have been made at times in between more active moments in the studio.  The repetitive and automatic operation of creating these works has granted space for focus or daydreams of what is to follow.  They are objectively produced as an act of meditation and progress while ideas generate and gestate.  Constructed from cut plywood, individually raked with tile mortar, like brush strokes, the wall works are reconstructed and puzzled together, rejoining the carved glyphs, as one complete narrative; cumbersome and airy, these works echo the sculptural works they surround.

It is unsettling, for me, not to have my mind race. I am used to a chorus of voices in conversation. Now, it is not that there is just one voice; the room is totally quiet.  

Elizabeth Atterbury (b. 1982, West Palm Beach, FL) received her BA from Hampshire College, and her MFA from MassArt.  Solo exhibitions include Document, Chicago, IL; The Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, ME; kijidome, Boston, MA; and Mrs., Queens, NY. Atterbury recently produced a second portfolio of monoprints with Wingate Studio, Hinsdale, NH.  She has been included in group exhibitions at Et. al, San Francisco, CA; Western Exhibitions, Chicago, IL; TSA, Brooklyn, Bodega and Kate Werble Gallery, New York, NY; The Portland Museum of Art and The ICA at Maine College of Art, Portland, ME.  She also will be included in a forthcoming exhibition at Super Dutchess, New York, NY opening later this month. Atterbury lives and works in Portland, Maine.

Please join us for an opening reception on Saturday, November 17, between 6 - 9pm.  For available works, press inquiries, and additional information, please contact hello@mrsgallery.com.