Detail from a work-in-progress by Ellen LeBow
Ellen LeBow works out of her apartment in Cambridge, and at the moment the space is completely engulfed with art supplies. She has recently embarked on a new creative journey, exploring a new medium for her artistic expression. She finds herself completely consumed, saying, “I’ve covered my every surface, including on top of my bed and on the floor. The place is insane right now, it’s just covered.” She is teaching herself a new art form after years of perfecting a completely different one, which is leaving LeBow feeling refreshed. She says, “the beauty for an artist to start over like a student of a technique makes you feel very alive and new and humble. That’s the part that was best for me.”
LeBow’s entire career before this change was dedicated to using clay board as her medium. A white clay surface on which she would draw and scratch through using a knife. Using this technique, she was able to do large compositions that included lots of detail. “I liked doing it, and so I just kept expanding it and getting more into it, and understanding it more and just changing it as I got better at it. It was like I said, decades. It was low tech, and it just kept me fascinated. It still does.”
Now, she is exploring a technique she claims has captivated her for years. It’s called bas-relief, an ancient sculptural technique that allows the design to be slightly raised off the canvas. According to LeBow, “It’s probably one of the most ancient ways of making sculpture, and I’ve studied it a lot.” She uses joint compound and plaster to execute this technique, which is a modern practice that is much more accessible than the ancient methods of using marble or clay. Perfecting these elements is what has engrossed her. She says, “starting a brand-new medium after doing a deep dive into a different one for years, was really energetic to start. From not quite knowing how to handle it, into learning how to handle it and what it requires.”
The learning process took over every aspect of her life in a way she had never experienced before. She has been preoccupied with the task of refining her skills and has dedicated all her time to doing so, which inevitably forced her to neglect aspects of her regular life. “I just, I stopped talking to people. I literally stopped communicating with my friends. I couldn’t hardly go outside. I was just immersed, obsessed with figuring out and using this medium. I loved it, but I did lose a big hunk of social life doing it.” This experience was so unlike anything she had ever felt before, she was so submerged into her craft it almost scared her. She says, “it was a bizarre experience. I was afraid, because I really couldn’t even answer like an email. I couldn’t bring myself to, I had to just stop writing, and just went totally into visual. I can’t explain it, usually I could do them both, one relieves the other. But I was obsessed with understanding, and I can’t say I totally understand it, then I’d be bored.”
LeBow finds inspiration in the symbols of ancient Egyptian history. She says, “I started very simply doing cats, but not cute cats, ancient Egyptian cats, because they were beautiful, tall, skinny, kind of mysterious, graceful forms. And to simplify that, I couldn’t believe what I was doing. But I was learning with them, and I just started working from there.”
One symbol in particular is known as Sekhmet, a lioness figure seen in Egyptian mythology that symbolized war and healing. LeBow says, “Sekhmet became a vehicle for these pieces.” However, bas-relief doesn’t allow LeBow to include as much detail as she used to, which challenges her to get creative with her use of shadow and light, she explains “now I’m working with shadow and light, which is when you do a bas-relief, any sculpture, but you do specifically ones that are just low, low volume. It depends on [shadow and light] if they look like a blob of white shadow on it. So that has a lot to do with shaping.”
Bas-relief also presents LeBow with more textural freedom than she previously experienced. She says, “I could be very loose with it, or very precise with it. Very low, very high, I could do a lot of things with it, and texturally, I was inspired.” She went on to say, “with this material, I’m liking it because I could leave some of it rough and unfinished or very gestural, and some of it, I could smooth, polish, and refine it with details. And so it’s very versatile as I’ve been working with it. I don’t have to be stuck in one way of working with it. I don’t know if that’ll translate to viewers who look at the work. They might just look at it and say, ‘that’s really crude, finish that,’ or whatever, but it’s all on purpose.”
As for the future, LeBow plans to continue her journey exploring the many opportunities bas-relief allots her, and plans to grow her pieces, literally and figuratively. “My intention is to do very big ones someday. These aren’t big, but they will be. They’re going to grow.”
Ellen LeBow’s new work will be on view at the Rice Polak Gallery, 430 Commercial St., Provincetown, August 15 – 28. There will be an opening reception on Friday, August 16, 7 – 9 p.m. For more information, call 508.487.1052 or visit ricepolakgallery.com.
