Ellen Sayers

Collecting Waterfalls

1/20/23 - 2/24/23

Ellen Sayers pulls nature into her practice. Natural elements inspire her work and often are physically part of the work itself. Her practice does not come from a passive relationship with nature rather it requires time and muscle, travel and getting dirty. Sayers’ art making process includes climbing trees, digging and planting and playing in the mud. The resulting pieces have a whimsical spirit and joy, but also ritual, groundedness and grief. A spectrum of human emotions blended with the varied spectrum of nature: the calm of meditation, fallen leaves, pandemic isolation, roiling clouds, youthful discoveries in the studio classroom, defiant grassy cracks on a sidewalk. Her work often carries the tension between expectation of fine art and the looseness and messiness of human experiences: the real and the ideal. Sayers brings viewers into the act of art making and encourages them to tap into their sense of wonder. Her site-specific communal work for The Shirley Project Space, Giving Flight encourages play, self-reflection and a renewed sense of curiosity.

Sayers finds inspiration in art history and the human history of mark-making across time and cultures. Like those who came before her, she makes art as a conduit, using primal gestural marks to mimic the gestures found in natural forces. This current body of work compresses personal histories, rituals and a career in education. Sayers weaves her life experiences with energies and movement of the elements. Collecting Waterfalls is a mixed media journal that conjures swirling water and wind, churning brush fires and flocks of birds. Sayers’ body and gesture always present. There is the energy of a hiker: exertion, quietude, deliberation, purpose. A mediation between a human’s size and form and the grandeur and power of nature. Sometimes Sayers collects inspirational objects but more meaningful is her collection of the ephemeral, the un-collectible. Sayers gathers moments and forges connections through careful observation and experiences: A pilgramage to a waterfall but also a walk to the subway.