The Houses that Elizabeth Klimek Built

The dream, and not just an American one, is that practically everyone at one time in their life fantasizes about having a home; a safe place to put your stuff, to rest, raise a family and retire. It would be a place with a little bit of yard, a porch, maybe some flowers, and it would have a dog and a cat constantly chasing each other around the house.  And (if one were honest to admit it) it would be one of those homes with a reflective blue orb yard ball with a fountain and a statue of a Bambi-esque deer or one of those painted wooden things sitting right out in front of the yard where someone's bending over so we can see their enormous derriere . I could not profess to wanting such a grandiose estate, but have seen plenty of them back home in Ohio, so to each their own.....

 

Elizabeth Klimek http://elizabethklimek.com/presents her version of the home fantasy in a number of ways that caught my attention and gave me a glimpse of  something familiar, something from home, of home. She's taken the concept and created silhouetted and three-dimentional hearths. She's turned printmaking to her advantage, creating fragmented cutouts of slatboard wooden texture, using photographic glimspes of trees against the farm's nightlight, old farmhouses and she's covering them with old, faded wallpapers from some Grandma's parlor. There are also stitching, stains and worn surfaces on the wallpapers; as though it's a place left behind in one's memories.

Klimek creates a variation on the Victorian silhouette cutout where she isolates the house in silhouette, and  fills them with old, faded wallpaper. The result is a place we may have all been, where we go to Grandma's house and go clammering upstairs to play with our cousins. We run our little hands over the colored wallpapers as we race upstairs: feeling the dusty, dry textures of the paper and looking, (as we play hide and seek in the upstairs bedroom closets), for any small chip or tear in the paper so we can go and tear it further to see the glue-stained yellow backside of the paper, and  to see if there is another wallpaper underneath; if it has multiple-color layers and we see how pretty they all were - even in their glorified fadedness. Ahh, to be a kid again.... 

The first image in this article shows one of those proud home owner rites of passage, which always amuses me, where someone has just got to take a picture of their own house and put it onto a frame, often with their family name emblazoned in Old English script at the bottom. In this case, the psychedelic flower-child patterning reminiscient of the 1970s sourrounds the modified trailer home. It's delightfully fresh and painfuly sweet.

Klimek's image directly above, of the wallpaper silhouette of the house frame, is a wonderful commentary on the memories associated within a home. The black surrounding the house traps and confines those memories, stains and all, and speaks to one's ghosts that we can never really forget. 

Another thing I enjoyed about Klimek's work are her printed constructions of simplified hearths. The buildings, without doors or windows, are equally chock-full of memories - loaded within by their confined form as much as heavily-laden with the memories we conjure up from initial sight of their exterior. Again, we all can relate to our memories of visiting relatives, and the things that last with us for a lifetime.

In closing, the houses that Klimek has built are like powerful reliquaries. Instead of holding a sacred object for religious prayer, they hold precious memories of people dear to us and of times gone by. They are a physical manifestation of our personal foundations, and our dreams for saftey and security.They are also like reliquaries in that they require our annual holiday and birthday pilgrimmages, to serve as vessels of things deemed precious and hauntingly familiar.  

Ellie Honl's Coping Construct/Destructions Grab Attention at the MAPC show

Wisconsin's Ellie Honl's two multi-media constructed prints at the 2011 Fall Members' Mid America Print Council show conjure up environments filled with trepidation, anxiety, danger and something imminently unpleasant. Her "Abandoned" piece (at the top) shows a boarded-up dwelling, with slat boards and patched panels. Set amidst a swarm of thousands of starlings, the dwelling seems secure enough, but the sheer number of encircling birds make the structure's odds for survival seem slim. Also, the ground swell of color surrounding the dwelling would suggest the starlings' wave of motion has actually lifted the structure from the earth, and is swirling it up into the sky with the birds.


"Play Dead" (2nd image) shows a cluster of smaller dwellings that at one time were unified and standing upright, but now 'assume the position' of playing dead; again set against an impending storm of starlings as they approach the play dead structures. The ground is as nebulous as in the former image, but the position of the structures and sticks indicate they sit upon an open patch of earth amongst the sweeping colors. Their possum approach to survival is tenuous at best, for once the starlings swoop down upon the structures their momentum will surely sweep the fragile containers into the sky.


From her website, www.elliehonl.com/, I also enjoy her installations which compliment her 3D glass house and figurine maquettes set against the prints. In that, she is akin with the works of Jennifer Bartlett, who also broke ground in the 80s and 90s with her built constructions set against her paintings. 


These pieces come from Honl's Coping Strategies series, and she says they are about coping with change - both external and internal. --
   "In response to a chaotic, uncertain world, this body of work explores individuals’ coping strategies. Turbulent skies and ambiguous swarms threaten communities comprised of delicate glass shelters. These complex constructions are stand-ins for facets of a person’s psyche...those individuals that effectively cope with their changing environment are left stronger and more resilient." 


I get that. I get what she's talking about. The structures act as shelters and actual embodiments of the people who live on the land. In this case, Honl describes a journey through the Midwest as the source of this series and actually witnessing the incredible flying patterns of starlings. I've seen them myself and stared in wonder at their lyricism, and their rolling thunder as they fly. It is an amazing thing to witness. 


There are changes and fluctuations in life - some we can handle, some we can't.  Imminent and threatening things, which we defend ourselves against or engage in the battle to survive. It's being human. And the one thing most people who live in the open stretches of this country experience is that direct engagement with our environment: the storms, the tornadoes, wild fires and floods. We live in it, with it, survive it, and come back more resilient than ever to stay our course and live where we choose and do what we do.  


Honl's work speaks eloquently of survival - not only the physical sense, but also the internal, psychological. Her wooden and glass-like structures, though they seem in peril most of the time,  are more than capable of surviving an onslaught of little birds that could peck away the glass surface (our skins), and still leave the wooden frame (the psyche) intact.  Honl's work engages the human spirit and reminds us that life is full of surprises. She reminds us also that we must have faith to know we can weather those trials and upsets.