On Tuesday, March 12, 2024 at 11.30 a.m. Joseph Gallivan interviews Anna Von Mertens about her show Elements and Objects, which is on now at Elizabeth Leach Gallery through April 27.
Von Mertens talks about coloring in her cosmic cyanotypes with gold and silver pens, hand drawing emojis one at a time, and the influence on her work of both her daughter and Henrietta Swan Leavitt, who was an influential astronomer at the Harvard College Observatory a century ago.
This show was recorded on Zoom video conferencing software on March 7 and edited by Joseph Gallivan.
ELIZABETH LEACH GALLERY
417 NW 9th Avenue, Portland, OR 97209
TUES - SAT: 10:30 AM - 5:30 PM
TEL: 503.224.0521
EMAIL: art@elizabethleach.com
FROM THE PRESS RELEASE:
March 7 - April 27, 2024
Opening Reception: March 7, 2024, 5:30 - 7:30 pm
Elizabeth Leach Gallery is pleased to present Anna Von Mertens’s exhibition Elements and Objects, which brings together two new bodies of work created meticulously with colored pencils on black paper. One series references the cosmos while the other is sourced from the digital world. Both speak to how these abstract realms are tangibly present in our everyday lives.
In her series Remnants, Von Mertens devised an iterative process to create each drawing that references the generative life cycles of stars. She arranged tangles of jewelry on sun-sensitive paper into forms reminiscent of cosmic phenomena. Exposing these arrangements to the sun, a chemical reaction occurred anywhere sunlight hit the paper, creating a record of both where the jewelry was in full contact with the paper and where the jewelry lifted slightly from it. Von Mertens used these patterns of touch points and slippages as sketches, then refined them into finished drawings using metallic pencils against black backgrounds. This step-by-step creation is a testament to the connection between all things - each of us is a slow gathering of stardust - yet with each step the preceding steps recede.
The three drawings from Von Mertens’s continuing series Objects (100 Emojis) use pattern to animate the symbols that populate our phones. In one drawing, items of mending, tending, cutting, and repairing repeat in a diagonal cascade. In another, the repeated shapes of four emojis are arranged to echo the geometry of the traditional Tumbling Blocks quilt pattern. Giving these objects hours of attention with her careful rendering, Von Mertens offers the reminder that these images in our phones are as much a part of this world as anything else. We share the same ecosystem.
In both aspects of her show Von Mertens finds value in pulling remote worlds closer, making distant realms feel more present. Experiencing a broader perspective helps make the connections we build precious, and create value in our human existence.
Anna Von Mertens was born in Boston and currently lives and works in New Hampshire. She received her MFA from California College of the Arts, and BA from Brown University. Most recently Von Mertens exhibited a solo show in 2018 at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University (Cambridge, MA); in 2023 this exhibition Measure then traveled to the University Galleries of Illinois State University and Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College. MIT Press will be publishing a book on her expanded Radcliffe project in September 2024. Other recent exhibitions include a 2013 Rijswijk Textile Biennial (Netherlands), 40 under 40: Craft Futures at the Smithsonian American Art Museum's Renwick Gallery (Washington, DC) and the 2012 DeCordova Biennial (Lincoln, MA). Von Mertens's work is in the permanent collections of the Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum (Saratoga Springs, NY), the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (Boston, MA), the Berkeley Art Museum (Berkeley, CA), the Smithsonian American Art Museum's Renwick Gallery (Washington, DC) and the Museum of Art at the Rhode Island School of Art and Design (Providence, RI), among other institutions.
Anna Von Mertens has had numerous solo exhibitions throughout the United States including Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute; Berkeley Art Museum; Ithaca College; Boston Center for the Arts; University Art Museum, UC Santa Barbara; Crisp-Ellert Art Museum, Flagler College; Mills College Art Museum; University Art Museum, Cal State Long Beach; University of San Francisco’s Thacher Gallery; Headlands Center for the Arts; Elizabeth Leach Gallery; Jack Hanley Gallery; and Sara Meltzer Gallery.
Group exhibitions include The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College; Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College; Kansas City Art Institute’s Artspace; Needle’s Eye at KODE, Art Museums of Bergen, Norway, which traveled to the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo, Norway; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; a 2012 commissioned work for Ballroom Marfa; Aspen Art Museum; The 2012 DeCordova Biennial; and the 40th anniversary exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Renwick Gallery.
Von Mertens is the recipient of a 2010 United States Artists Fellowship in Visual Arts and a 2007 Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Biennial Award.
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Joseph Gallivan has been a reporter since 1990. He has covered music for the London Independent, Technology for the New York Post, and arts and culture for the Portland Tribune, where he is currently a Feature Writer. He is the author of two novels, "Oi, Ref!" and "England All Over" which are available on Amazon.com
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