ELISE ROBERTSON
ART
ARROYO CATCHMENT
Photographic/multimedia sculpture - objects & artifacts from the Arroyo Seco basin, original & historical photographs/news clippings rendered via cyanotype onto cotton gauze, filmed scenes of the present-day Arroyo Seco.
As an artist, I am perpetually fascinated by the moment, or the place, where order meets chaos, and particularly as this pertains to the intersection of humanity and the wider natural world. In this piece, I turn my gaze toward the Arroyo Seco River basin which runs just a few hundred feet from my home. Having, for the past twenty years, walked past and in it, and seen it as both its namesake dry basin and as a raging river, I still find it endlessly fascinating and inviting.
I found myself driven to create a work that embodies the complexity of this place: the large & small, the past and the present. I want to show the insides and undersides, the parts that are not normally seen, and to reflect on the interconnectedness of it all.
This piece emulates a debris catchment, objects caught and intertwined in the course of flooding. All of the objects, branches, and detritus are locally found/scavenged. Live oak acorns and toyon berries, both native to the area, bits of concrete, stained glass remnants and nails from an old worktable dating from the late 1800’s found in a dumpster at Judson Studios. The cookstove grate was abandoned when a few of our neighbors were moved from their encampment a few weeks ago. The shifting history of this place is rendered onto pieces of gauze, using cyanotype technique, a natural photographic process in which the sun develops the images, and which has been used since the early 1800’s, including by botanists to capture and record images of plants.
THE TESSELATION GARDEN
Flipped-lens microscopy, digital inkjet prints, resin cast moveable tiles, presented on a light table
An exploration of fractal patterns in nature and how intimate interaction with our surroundings can broaden our perspective and calm our minds.
Inspired by the calming feeling I experience in my garden, this project was created by flipping my camera lens and using it to document close-up images of my garden, bringing into focus the wonder and beauty of even the smallest patch of nature.
Each of these photographs was taken in the 100 square feet between my front gate and my front door. I used microscopy to turn a new eye to common things like flowers, pieces of wood, insects, weeds, even our beloved family pet - revealing fractal patterns not always immediately visible at human scale.
The images themselves are cast into clear resin elongated hexagon shapes evocative of leaves or petals, which allow for multiple tesselating patterns to be created by moving them around on the light table. In addition to documenting objects, the photos provide a variety of colors, shapes and sizes within the hexagons, inviting many design possibilities incorporating color, shape, pattern, and more.
My desire was to share the visceral, interactive, meditative experience I have in my garden by recreating the stimuli in a new way in an alternate space. Ideally, creating an experience that feels illuminative, connected, and calm. As an artist, I am perpetually drawn to the decisive moment, or place, where order meets chaos, and I have always found gardens, particularly wilder “cottage” style gardens, to be a wonderful manifestation of this edge.
I imagine future iterations of this piece in interactive art/science spaces and children's museums, with the idea that the 100 square feet photographed would also be situated within the grounds of the facility, allowing for participants to experience, compare and reflect upon both.
WAS/IS (The Suitcase Series)
Digital inkjet transfer mapped onto vintage suitcases, polaroid photographs as seen through door peephole lenses.
I’m just gonna say it - this is my empty nest series. When you spend 18 years raising kids, and they leave for college, there’s a void. And you look around, and so much of them is still present. Memory is projected on the objects, the tasks, the moments, the time of day, the weather. They are everywhere. But they’re not.
It’s a strange and beautiful feeling of letting go, and allowing for what’s next for all of us. Below are some of the polaroids that can be seen through the peepholes in the center of each suitcase.
INTERWOVEN
I am interested in the colors, shapes and patterns of the natural world and how they are repeated in endless ways, large and small. A hand is a mountain is a bird is a flower is an ocean is a tree.
I find the visual interweaving of these forms calming and satisfying, but also fun and playful. I love seeing how color and light shift and dance and play in the landscape, depending on the weather, the time of day, whether I am under the canopy of a tree or climbing a mountain or walking along the beach. And I love how these shape and tone variations are found on the landscapes of our bodies as well.
For me, visually co-mingling the human body with the natural world inspires a deep level of appreciation, connection, and shared experience. The weaving of the photographs themselves provides an additional visceral manifestation of this union. Humans have been weavers for millenia, but so have birds, spiders, fungi, plants, and countless other creatures . The physical act of co-mingling, whether fibers or roots or webs, is a manifestation of the most basic and joyous essence of life.
