Elizabeth Atterbury “Duets”

Mrs.

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Mrs. Elizabeth Atterbury’s third solo exhibition with the gallery, titled Duets. For this occasion, the Portland, Maine based artist has created a new series of monotype prints with Wingate Studio, where she has continued to hone her unconventional use of the intaglio process, marrying chine collé and embossment. Exemplifying her diverse studio practice, Atterbury displays two sculpted wood fans, as well as a hand-carved peanut; all of which she has shifted to a larger scale. Between these two modes of work, Atterbury ruminates on the duet: an expression of two working together, becoming a third.

When creating the monotypes, Atterbury eschews traditional processes in favor of cut paper and shaped embossments made from hand-cut copper plates. These embossed shapes spring forth from the artist’s life and history - her kids’ drawings, Chinese calligraphy practice paper, negative shapes discovered while cutting the plates themselves. The contours leave a shadow, like an empty chair - as much about what is there as what is missing. Improvising at the press bed, Atterbury arranges the shaped plates while thinking of individuals, matching forms with dates. She considers how time and its markers can be depicted in a less common order. This is reflected in the portfolio’s title, Calendars.

Compositionally, these prints form grid structures that resemble tennis courts with divided fields of color, undergirded with layered paper and seams. Tube-like lines, solo and in tandem, waver slightly in their handmadeness; bumping, pressing, and burrowing through their respective courts. They are moles, athletes and comet tails. These works read as maps of the future and past, pointing towards a destination while also tracing roads traveled. At times, the color of the paper below is left visible, but often the initial layers are buried, only evidenced by the weight of the print itself; a hidden world.

Song I Sang, a smaller chine collé and embossed print, acts as a punctuation mark within the exhibition. Overlapped flower forms and cut colored paper are pressed into shapes that at once resemble a sheet of notebook paper and a deconstructed envelope. The two upper bands of color rest on the lower third band, a wobbly but assured foundation for the trio of sections. The notebook paper shape is clear while the flower casts are more ambiguous: a child’s drawing? Alive or wilted? Beautiful or ugly? Certainly they contain a message. The stacked envelope shapes that make up the composition appear to depict the envelopes from both the outside and the inside; a double vantage point. Perhaps Atterbury is inviting us in and, in doing so, revealing her inner world.

Folding Fan and Second Fan rest on the floor of the gallery, spreading their wings to reveal the logic of their geometry. Modeled after small hand fans, one of which belonged to the artist’s grandmother, each fan splays open like a deck of cards in hand, gathering towards a point. They hold both possibility and potential; a controlled broadcast. In this masked time when our eyes are often the sole-communicators, the traditional act of holding a fan over the mouth shares familiarity. With the sculptures unfurled, it’s hard not to feel as if a secret has been shared; like peering into the inner workings of an analog clock, with the added thrill of pushing some unstated boundary.

With Peanut II, Atterbury has made a reproduction of a childhood gift; a ceramic peanut shell from her late mother. It is a swaddled baby in its form, its shell carved into a generalized pattern; its own kind of calligraphy. The top half can be removed, splitting the shell in two. Inside rests two dice, stationed in their own form-fitting beds. The sculpture - a perfect metaphor from a mother to a daughter who is now a mother herself - calls out to delight, discovery, and loss. Here and elsewhere in the exhibition, pairs of relationships, subtle and overt, find their footing in Duets.

-Based on a longer text by gallery artist Meghan Brady. To read the full version, please click here or visit the gallery for a paper copy.

Duets is on view at Mrs., 6040 56th Dr., Maspeth, Queens, NY 11378 through March 12, 2022.
Elizabeth Atterbury (born 1982, West Palm Beach, FL) lives and works in Portland, Maine. Recent solo and group shows include Mrs., Maspeth; Kate Werble Gallery, New York; The Portland Museum of Art, Portland; The Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville; kijidome, Boston; DOCUMENT, Chicago; Western Exhibitions, Chicago; The Luminary, St Louis; Et al. Etc., San Francisco; Pulaski Park Field House, Chicago; Able Baker Contemporary, Portland; Ida Schmid, Brooklyn; TSA, Brooklyn; Bodega, Philadelphia/New York; KANSAS, New York; and The ICA at Maine College of Art, Portland, among others. She received her BA from Hampshire College and her MFA from MassArt. Recent exhibitions include Mirages, a three person show between Atterbury, Strauss Bourque-Lafrance and Katy Cowan at the Crisp-Ellert Art Museum at Flagler College, St. Augustine, FL and Spatial Relations, a group exhibition with Gordon Hall and Anna Hepler at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Rockland, ME. This is Atterbury’s third solo exhibition with Mrs.

Atterbury is represented by Mrs., Maspeth, NY and DOCUMENT, Chicago, IL.