my art...is all about simplicity, serenity and balance. i love shapes, especially lines and curves and the moods they create. my chosen medium is metal...because it flows.
Elizabeth Ortiz
Artists create because they have to. I do believe that. If they have no money to buy materials they use found objects or whatever is at hand. Recycled and repurposed art is nothing new - artsts have recycled forever. One of the most striking works I remember from an exhibition of Cuban artist, Quisqueya Henriquez were photos made very early in her career. She arranged seaweed found at the beach into hexagonal patterns and then created hauntingly beautiful images. A found object - beach flotsam become geometric abstractions.
Elizabeth Ortiz created a mobile - "13 Sticks" - from pieces of wood salvaged from a friend's boat. Another mobile - "Sunday Funnies" - is made from fragments of newspaper comics and "Poetry in Motion" is recycled postcard messages suspended from a copper swirl.
Artists will also carve out work space - that "room" of one's own - wherever. Artist and jewelry maker Lis Ortiz has set up a temporary workshop within a shop. Several months ago she stepped in to manage a neighborhood liquor store for a friend incapacitated by a stroke. So Lis has been running the store and making her jewelry in studio space she has set up near the store's front window. She hammers her silver and copper and incorporates lovely stones to create her "mobile" earrings.
Lis has recently begun collaborating with another artist - Arturo Carranza, who creates exquisite miniature abstract paintings in acrylics. (Arturo, who will be featured in another posting, also paints portraits on found objects that include pebbles, rocks, rubber balls, newel posts and even horseshoe crabs washed up at Orchard Beach in the Bronx.) Arturo is artfully cutting up his mini paintings into even smaller pieces which Lis then wraps with wire and fashions into earrings - truly works of wearable art. They have real presence even though they are incredibly light.
The "mobile" earrings, like Lis' mobiles have fluidity and movement - a line curving in space and the glittering stones suspended from the silver wires, move with a toss of the head. Some designs are bold; others quite delicate and all about balance.
Check out more images of Elizabeth's work on my website: www.steviesartisans.com
