Upcoming Shows

"Botanical" - opening October 19, 6-9 pm
Local Projects
11-27th 44th Rd
Long Island City, NY 11101

Et Tu, Art Brute? 
AEG Underground
Andrew Edlin Gallery
212 Bowery NYC 10012

Organized by Jamie Sterns

Exhibition Dates: November 17 – January 28th
Opening reception, November 17th, 6-8pm

Yellow Rose

about 12 x 8 inches

painted paper collage: gouache on paper

2010

(this is the piece I submitted)

Work from my trip to Florence: Spring 2016

Even though I've been back for a bit, I haven't posted any of the work I did this last trip to Florence. I spent a lot of time drawing and painting in the gardens because I find the explosion of blossoms simply irresistible. After I came back to NYC I have collaged in some of the drawings from trips to the various museums. All the work is 12 x 9 inches. The two sketchbooks (one for drawing and one with watercolor paper) are that size as well as the Yupo paper I painted on.

"Eve Weeping" 

"Tintorretto's Dog"

"Calla Lilies"

"Purple Irises"

"Purple Poppies"

One Person Exhibition

Unstuck

Soho20 Gallery

56 Bogart St.

Brooklyn

January 7-31, 2016

Reception: January 8th, 6-9 pm

I'll be showing collages, drawings, animation, video and my sketchbooks.  

Octopus II, Collage:Gouache on paper, 12 1/4 x 10 1/2 inches, 2015

Dick and Jane book burning from Elizabeth Bisbing on Vimeo.

Upcoming exhibitions

Here is a piece I will have in the exhibition:

Soho20 Gallery is moving to Bushwick!

I'll be having a show in January of 2016.  I'm working hard towards that. Here's my favorite from my time last fall in Florence.

Group Show in Brooklyn opening May 1st

"Maypole" a group show 5/1 to 5/29/2015  opening-May 1st - 6 to 8 PM. Curated by: J. A. Holt  I will be showing these three pieces: Chinese Pistache Tree, Painted paper collage, 2015

Trumpet Flowers, Collage, 2015

Sea Monster, Painted paper collage, 2015

Upcoming exhibition

Show & Tell 7
April 25-May 16, 2015

Reception: Saturday, April 25^th, 2 to 5pm

Blue Door Art Center
Yonkers, NY
914-965-3397

There's a link to a map and directions on their facebook page:
Blue Door Art Center Facebook page

I am showing work that I did in Italy.  Also there is the tell part of it - I am to give a demonstration or artist talk on May 16th.

Flora & Forest

February 6-March 7; Reception February 12

Romano Gallery, Blair Academy, Blairstown, NJ

Winter Green

January 29 - March 22, 2015

Opening Reception Thursday January 29th, 5p-7p

Gallery 51, MCLA, North Adams, MA

A review of my recent exhibition by John Goodrich

Elizabeth Bisbing & Mariángeles Soto-Díaz, Sept 3-28, 2013

Elizabeth Bisbing
Knapweed 
2012
gouach, collaged paper
14 x 11 in


Mariangeles Soto-Diaz
Color Felt Translation 6
2013
silkscreen, acrylic and gouache on wood
18 x 24 in

Connected, and Still Personal

These days we’re nothing if not connected. And so is our art; one of the most salient features of contemporary art is the drive for inclusiveness—for the dismantling of the last barriers between art object and viewer, using new technologies, novel mixtures of media, and site-specific installations. 

When reduced to a recipe, however, the inclusiveness can actually work to exclude the kind of complex and intimate expression we expect of more traditional art. Two solo installations at Soho20, however, succeed at engaging the viewer personally even as they exploit new trends and technologies. 

Venezuelan native Mariángeles Soto-Díaz turns to new media to analyze personal perceptions. A CalArts alumna, she has put her MA in Aesthetics and Politics to practical use, building through the social media a database of individual responses to her query: what color represents your current status? The string of replies (many in Spanish) are printed in a paragraph on one wall, and reappear in fragmentary form in the backgrounds of small wood panels featuring triangles painted in the relevant colors. The panels in turn are connected by zigzagging lines of small, similarly colored felt triangles that connect gallery walls and floor. The effect is more arresting conceptually than pictorially—considered independently, the panels are closer in spirit to the decorativeness of Vasarely than the poetry of Klee—but the artist’s will to engage vitalizes the installation, as does her layering of the paradoxes of high-tech culture: the global extraction of very individual predilections, and their translation from the optical to the verbal and back. 

Elizabeth Bisbing’s collages and animations explore perceptions of nature in more personal fashion. A series of a dozen collages presents an intriguingly updated version of old-fashioned botanical studies. Delicately cut-out bits of colored paper, layered with the blunt physicality of collage, convey the exuberance of individual flowering plants – thistle, knapweed, tansy, and others—down to tiny veins and stamens; subtle shifts of color evoke the luminous turnings of petals from light to shade. Another series adds a mixture of the innocent and the sinister, combining the flower motif with images of the artist’s childhood alter ego (“Little Betty Jane”) and her encounter with giant insects and other monsters. A natural outgrowth of her collages, two of the artist’s stop-action animations are also on view. The storylines of these videos, both depicting a little girl emerging from and finally subsumed by nature, may not be groundbreaking, but they possess a poignant intimacy of description and technique. For good measure, the installation includes a site-specific work: a collage of a hibiscus plant with four small Betty Janes (constructed originally for the animation “The Swamp”), clambering up one of the gallery’s walls.

Mariángeles Soto-Díaz and Elizabeth Bisbing at Soho20 Chelsea, Sept. 3-28, 547 West 27th Street, www.soho20gallery.com

Soho20 Chelsea
547 West 27th Street
www.soho20gallery.com    

This review is published on 

City Arts website: 

http://cityarts.info/2013/09/24/only-engage/

And John Goodrich's website - "On View At" 

http://www.onviewat.com/index.html                        

Current Exhibition

Elizabeth Bisbing

More life than still 

September 3 – September 28, 2013

You can view The Swamp and Metamorphosis from this exhibition at: https://vimeo.com/user7571015/videos

547 W. 27^th Street, Suite 301

New York, NY 10001

(212) 367-8994

(212) 367-8984 fax

Tues. – Sat. 12 – 6PM

info@soho20gallery.com   www.soho20gallery.com

The Swamp from Elizabeth Bisbing on Vimeo.

Upcoming Exhibition

It’s About You and Me:

Exhibition to Explore Autobiographic Traces,

Hidden Boundaries, the Interconnections Between Identity and Self

NEW YORK – ABC No Rio is pleased to present It’s About You and Me, curated by Monica

Hardmeier. The exhibition features four artists whose work utilizes their own bodies as material and

theme. Through video, photography, performance, collage, and other media, Elizabeth Bisbing,

Theresa Byrnes, Martine Fougeron, and Ann Hirsch examine contemporary social structures,

mechanisms of representation, and identity and background.

The exhibition opens FRIDAY APRIL 19 and runs through MAY 9.

The opening event on April 19 will include at 8:00pm a performance of CLOTHED, a new work by

Theresa Byrnes. Ms. Byrnes describes the piece, “CLOTHED explores the relationship between

painting and photography, action and documentation. Is the artist’s work the subject or the artist person

the subject? Or do they reveal each other? In CLOTHED that contemplation is the subject.”

On Sunday April 28 at 4:00pm there will be a public presentation at which the curator and artists

will discuss the show.

It’s About You and Me is part of ABC No Rio’s “in Exile” programming, and is the first of two

exhibitions to be held at Bullet Space in the spring of 2013.

It’s About You and Me

April 19 – May 9, 2013

Opening: Friday April 19 at 7:00pm

Viewing Hours: Sundays 2:00 — 4:00pm

Wed & Thrs 5:00 —7:00pm

ABC No Rio in Exile at BULLET SPACE

292 East 3rd Steet

(bet. Aves C & D)

212.254.3697

www.abcnorio.org

ABC No Rio is a center for art and activism, known internationally as a venue for oppositional culture. ABC No Rio was founded in 1980 by artists committed to political and social engagement and retains these values to the present.

It’s About You and Me funded in part with support from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and the New York State Council on the Arts.

It’s About

New Photos of Wildflowers

Here are some of the images of the wildflowers.  You can see that these photos are much better than my scans.

Drawing idea

I just had an idea to draw on mylar - placing the mylar over a collage.  

Wildflower studies

 I have been up at the Catskills renting a house with Richard and some friends.  These are some of the studies I have begun of the local wildflowers.  They are in an 11 x 14 inch sketchbook.  I thought that would be best - for speed and safety.  

It is not an easy thing to do - make a painted paper collage of a flower.  The flower is much more life than still.  It may be blooming or the petals could be falling off.  Some flowers open only in the afternoons - other for just one day.  They really are constantly moving - if only to get more sunshine.  

A lucky thing happened in that the woman living a couple of houses by is a master gardener.  She has been helping me with my identifications.  I had my wild basil misidentified as motherwort.  

There are about 23 of these pages thus far.  I do not consider them complete or resolved - finished.  But, I am enjoying doing them.

 

Wild Basil

  

Field Daisies

 Bladder Campion

 Dame Rocket

Self Heal

Wild Geraniums

Work in Progress

I guess,  my interest in botanicals is partly seasonal.  Here are three in cut paper -  in the method I share with Mrs. Delany.  I don't know what I will do next.  Will they be on black paper?  Will there be other collaged elements? 

Website updated

Just made some updates to my website.

New Work

I know it's been a long time since I posted any new work. I have been traveling a bit and so work is slow in coming. Here are two newly completed works. Above: another in the cookbook and teacup series and below: a bleeding heart flower in the mode of Mrs. Delany. I will be doing more with that. Not sure what yet. But, won't leave it as is; it is too close to Mrs. D's work.

New Work

I have long been interested in the domestic. And, with that the feminine. I feel the teacup speaks to that. Here I added a couple of vintage cook books. The top/plaid one belonged to my great aunt Isabel (not that she was a very good baker. In fact I don't remember her ever baking.) :-)

Just Fooling Around in the Studio

Since our trip to Italy over the Christmas break, I have been a little 'stuck' in the studio. I guess that is understandable after seeing all of that beautiful artwork. It was amazing and overwhelming. This is a collage of a tulip tree blossom that has been sitting around the studio for quite a while. I stuck LBJ on a blue bird on the stem of the leaf. I have been playing with images of birds with collograph prints of LBJ.