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Studio Stop

by Tess Wheelwright | Apr 17, 2006 2:48 am

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Posted to: Arts

Featured artist: Liz Pagano, Printmaker/Painter/Mixed media artist
Studio site: Erector Square, Peck Street
Next showing: “Surface, Space and Light” at the Arts and Literature Laboratory, 319 Peck St., 671-5175, www.allgallery.org, April 22-May 21, Opening Reception: Saturday, April 22, 1-5 pm
She is also: a sometime-teacher, pastry-chef, graphic designer and designer-lampshade maker.
What she’s working on: A collection of printed, painted, and collage-layered panes of glass and plexi-glass, set doubly into bass wood boxes, to be installed in stacks before a window to let the light come through them. “I think about each as its own little universe, an evolving cosmos. They are living and organic in that they are moving and glowing.”

How it’s going: “I love them. I’m in the ‘I love them’ stage. It’s exciting going through the stages of an idea.  I love to explore. I love to let the work take me where it will.”

How the project started: A lot of windows got replaced in her Erector Square building, and Liz “was lucky enough to grab the old window-panes, and that’s where it started. That’s absolutely where it started.”

Technique: Liz hand-prints right on to glass, or onto paper then affixed to glass, using methods like encaustic monotype, in which drawings and designs in melted beeswax on a hot metal plate gets transferred onto absorbent paper, or suminagashi, an ancient Japanese “ink-floating” process where dyes carefully dropped and blown in swirls across a water surface are picked up by paper lain gently on top. She also paints on paper that she then “impregnates” with wax to “get and hold the light in it” (pictured here). Other practice involves the press, like the embossing done with rubber bands pictured at the bottom of this story.

Process: “I work very immediately. The more you futz with something, the less accessible it becomes to the viewer.” Liz once had a teacher tell her “if you didn’t produce in the studio every day, you weren’t a real artist”—but she’s over that. “I learned that it’s ok not to always produce. Some days you just have to come in and clean, some days you just come in and sit, some days you come in and read, and that it’s all part of my process.” Now that she’s figured that out, instead of fighting it, she practices the “art of allowing.”

Broad inspiration: “Accidental beauty inspires me. I love looking at textures and how they reveal a history. I’m always searching for unexpected possibilities. My work magnifies moments, capturing movements, sometimes reactions or fusions. It’s gestural. The part I can’t control keeps me chasing/moving/searching. My process is about exploring interactions of chance and control, of coincidence and intent.”

Why she has to be an artist: After painting and drawing as a kid and going to school for graphic design, Liz took almost ten years off doing other work, often unhappily. Then she and a friend signed up for a printmaking class, and it was like coming home. “I thought, What have I been doing?” 

Artist’s complaint: “It can be a little isolating in the studio.  I have lots of friends in this complex, but some days I don’t see or talk to anyone all day. For working it’s just fine. It’s when I stop for the day that I start to feel the need to be around other human beings.”

On the New Haven gallery scene: “There are a lot of opportunities in New Haven, a lot of great galleries.” Problems can crop up when the sales don’t match the quality of the shows. “A great gallery can open, and it still won’t be selling a lot of work. A couple years later, reality hits. That’s also why a lot of artists are working at a loss each year!”

What she was doing in the studio Friday: “Schleppin’! Schlepping is what I was doing. I just picked these boxes up from the framer downstairs” to put on the finishing touches before installing them at ALL gallery Monday. 

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