Eve Eisenstadt (b. 1953, Detroit, Michigan) is an artist who came of age in the New York City of the 1970s, a pioneer of loft-living in Tribeca (before it was known as such) and a leader in working with handmade paper.
Biography
In a career that spans five decades, she has steadily created textural abstract images on handmade paper and most recently using oil pastels on linen.
Eisenstadt began at Cranbook in 1974, and, after making ceramics, found her way to handmade paper, which she used to create large-scale shapes and forms. She knocked on the door of Twinrocker Handmade Paper, a new mill in Indiana, and found that the owners had never worked directly with an artist before. Eisenstadt began to make work from handmade paper that took up entire walls and got noticed. Shortly after, Twinrocker developed programs for artists.
When she moved to New York City in 1978, her first loft was a sublet from Laurie Anderson. She began working with Dieu Donne papermill and getting recognition. Her work was shown at a Smithsonian traveling exhibition (1978-81), The Drawing Center (1982), Just Above Midtown Downtown (1982), the American Craft Museum (1982), and the Cleveland Institute of Art (1986). The Hadler/Rodriguez Galleries presented a number of solo exhibitions of her work that were noticed by curators Marsha Tucker and Lowery Sims, among others. Her work was also published in the landmark book The Art of Papermaking by Bernard Toale (David Publications, 1983) and written about in ARTnews.
The work of Elizabeth Murray is an inspiration, and Eisenstadt was fortunate to meet Murray a few times. Other influences are the work of Henry Smith, string games from Indigenous peoples, biology and cells, and Japanese design. She makes collage books using Japanese calendars and handmade papers, and has also made printed books with Timothy Barrett, a professor and MacArthur fellow at the University of Iowa.
As a woman artist and a beloved teacher of both secondary school and college, Eisenstadt has heard it all from artworld gatekeepers: “You don’t have a look I could sell” and “If you were a real artist, you would be a waitress, not a teacher.” Nevertheless, she has persisted in working to support her family while making art. After her gallery representation, the Hadler-Rodriguez in Chelsea, closed when the owners died of AIDS, she continued to work and never stopped. She has shown recently at Carter Burden Gallery, New York, and Aunt Linda, an alternative space in Berlin.
Statement
Images of the Dead Sea scrolls. Pieces of decorated bark from Samoa. Old fragments of fabric at museums. I’m drawn to these incomplete glimpses of history. I imagine how they were made and how they functioned in a world vastly different from ours. I’ve also been influenced by illustrated books given to me as gifts: on topics such as cells seen through a handmade microscope or Harry Smith’s exploration of Indigenous string games including cat’s cradle. Other images and shapes I use come from my passion for art history and travel, especially to India, Italy, and Japan. Most often, I’m interested in subtle layers of color, texture, and translucency within a structure. I work to carefully integrate abstract and architectural elements. No matter what the media, these combinations fascinate me.
I’ve learned over the years to reflect deeply before I begin a piece. I think about a work from the beginning through to its completion, creating multiple variations before I begin. I work in several mediums, including handmade paper, oil pastel on linen, and collage. In all cases I am interested in making an emotional connection with the viewer. I want to create a conversation between the work and the viewer.
The handmade paper pieces are created by “pulling” a sheet of white paper from a vat of paper pulp on a deckle frame, or mold. It is transferred, while wet, from the deckle frame to a felt blanket. Then, I “paint” on the base sheet of damp white paper with colored paper pulp. I mix over twenty colors of pulp in varying degrees of translucency to apply as “paint.” A large pieced-together stencil is placed on top of the base sheet of paper. The “painting” process involves lifting each stencil section, one at a time, to apply various colored paper pulps; each section can have several layers of color. When I finish applying colors the sheet is placed in a hydraulic press to remove the excess water. Finally, the pressed, damp sheet of paper is dried.
Modular pieces make up many of my larger works. These murals (up to 7’ high by12’ wide) may be compositionally changed by moving the units. For example, for a work of twenty similar triangular pieces – in various colors, with differing surface treatments – a curator receives a “map” of how the piece should be organized. However, they can choose to place whichever triangle they wish into each “spot.” This creates a physical interaction between the work and the viewer.
The paintings on linen use paint stick and oil pastel. I then etch through the multiple layers of paint. These works are not stretched and are meant to be handled (a physical connection with the viewer) or pinned to the wall. I see these works as “artifacts” – parts left over in time from larger works that have been lost or have disintegrated.
The collage books are made up of Japanese paper, drawings, and printed pages from a Japanese calendar. Each page could be a work on its own, yet a visual story unfolds within the sequence of pages. Again, the viewer is an active participant in the work, turning pages, going back and forth through the book, stopping to reflect on an image. The scale is intimate, the conversation almost a whisper.
Eve Eisenstadt
May 2024