Loren Eiferman will bring summer to the gallery with her exhibition “Welcome To My Garden”. 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 the botanical illustrations found within the pages of both the mysterious and cryptic 15th-century Voynich Manuscript as well as the black and white images of early 20th-century German photographer Karl Blossfeldt from his seminal book “Urformen der Kunst”.
Her sculptural work delves into our primal desire to connect with nature, to touch it, and be close to it. Honed over many decades, she has developed a unique technique of working with wood, which is her primary material. “It all begins with a drawing—an initial blueprint that guides me through my creative process. Each day, I collect fallen tree limbs and branches from the forest floor, mindful of never harming a living tree or using green wood. Once I have gathered these sticks and brought them back into my studio and let them rest for a period of time, I proceed to debark them and search for the inherent shapes and small forms hidden within each stick. Then the wood is cut and permanently joined into small naturally formed shapes. The open joints are then covered with homemade putty, followed by extensive sanding to achieve a seamless finish. This process of puttying and sanding is often repeated three times. It is through this slow meticulous process of joining small shapes together that each sculpture gradually takes form, bringing my original line sketch to life in three-dimensional space.”
The intention is for these sculptures to appear as if they were born from nature itself, and they grew organically over time. The truth is that they are composed of hundreds of intricately joined pieces of wood. Through the seamless integration of all these elements, Eiferman strives to blur the boundaries between the man-made and the natural, encouraging viewers to contemplate our profound interconnectedness between humans and the environment we all share and inhabit.
Exhibit by appointment only
June 22 – August 2, 2023
Closing event & Artist talk: Wednesday, August 2, 6-8pm talk 7pm
