Loren Eiferman
Loren Eiferman was born in Brooklyn, NY. After studying drawing in France, she became interested in sculpture and ultimately graduated from SUNY Purchase with a B.F.A. Over many decades Eiferman has created a unique technique of working with naturally found wood. Her organic wood sculptures take the detritus from nature and turns it into art. Eiferman has exhibited extensively throughout the Tri-State NY region-- from galleries in NYC to numerous galleries, alternative art spaces (Cathedral of St. John the Divine) and museum exhibits in the Hudson Valley and Connecticut (Katonah, Neuberger, Hudson River, New Britain and Dorsky Museums). Her work is included in numerous corporate and private art collections. In 2014 she installed a public art commission for the NYC MTA. She currently maintains and works in her studio in the Hudson Valley.
Can you tell us a bit about the process of making your work?
Over the last 30 years I’ve developed a unique way of working with wood-my primary material. I like to think of my work as drawing-but in wood. Usually, I begin my process with a pencil drawing-and that drawing acts like a road map of what direction I want my sculpture to go in. I start out each day with a walk in the woods surrounding my studio and collect tree limbs and branches that have fallen to the ground. I never chop down a living tree or use green wood. I allow the wood time to cure in my studio to make sure it won’t check or crack. Next, I debark the wood and looks for shapes found within the branch. Using a Japanese handsaw, I cut and connect these small naturally formed shapes together using dowels and wood glue. Then, all the open joints get filled with homemade putty, which once dried, is sanded till it’s smooth. This putty and sanding process needs to be repeated at least three times and is very labor intensive. The new sculpture appears like the original line drawing but in space. I want the work to appear as if it grew in nature, when in fact each sculpture is composed of hundreds of small pieces of wood that are seamlessly jointed together. My work can be called the ultimate recycling: where I take the detritus of nature and give it a new life.
Your work feels so magical. Can you talk about your use of wood and natural materials to recreate or reference nature?
"Nature Will Heal/Car", 2016, 108 pieces of wood, plastic toy car, iron metal coating and rust patina, 22" x 16" x 18".
Awww thanks so much for saying that! Much of my work for the past five years has been inspired by the illustrations found in the mysterious, “Voynich Manuscript”. This 15th century manuscript, which is currently housed at Yale’s Beinicke Library, was written in an unknown language, by an unknown author and filled with fantastical illustrations of plants and celestial phenomenon. Over the centuries this manuscript has eluded all attempts at deciphering its meaning and text. For example Alan Turing who cracked “The Enigma Code” during World War II failed to glean information as to what this text said. When I found this manuscript, I felt an immediate and profound connection to it and have been using it as source material for my current series called “Voynich”. The manuscript is divided into six sections. The first section is filled with illustrations of plants don’t actually exist in nature. They have out of proportion roots or wacky animalistic rhizomes and do feel strangely “magical”. I have been transposing the illustrations found in this “herbal” section into three- dimensional wood sculptures. With this series, I am hoping to shine a light on this unknowable nature with all its varying forms and magical qualities.
What are some references you draw upon in your work? Are there any themes in particular that you like to focus on when creating?
"7r", 166 pieces of wood, ash, matte medium and powdered graphite, 42" x 25" x 10".
The ‘Voynich’ series freed me up to embrace plant like forms in my work. I have created many different series over the years. Many of my older works might involve patterns and designs based off of historical or differing cultural elements. Since I began the “Voynich” series I have also completed other sculptural series that use plant-like forms as the starting point. One series in particular, “Nature Will Heal” takes the idea that nature has strength to heal our planet of all the pollution we humans have left-hopefully we will still be around to witness this healing. This is not science-it's a gut reaction to seeing how our planet transforms from season to season. Walking in the woods, watching the dead trees on the ground create food for the new young seedlings popping out of the ground. It’s that I’m witnessing a daily cycle and a rhythm to our planet—constantly growing, changing and transforming. One day, I was cleaning out my basement and found all these large plastic bags filled with plastic toys from my daughter’s childhoods. I thought this is insane—plastic within more plastic. I thought what are we doing on this planet? So I built these plant like forms where the “seeds and seed pods” are made up of detritus. These seeds could be a plastic Barbie convertible car or a Polly Pocket hunk of plastic or even a seedpod that is made entirely from discarded electronic parts. But, in all these works the plant is growing around this garbage “seed”, consuming and transforming what was once junk and turning it into a new form—thusly nature will heal.
Where are some of your favorite spaces that support contemporary art or design? Now that the art has an online presence, has that changed?
In pre-pandemic times, I would frequently take the train into the city and visit museums and art galleries in downtown Manhattan, in Bushwick or Chelsea. Since the pandemic I find that my sphere and interactions are way more limited and I’ve been staying in my local bubble and only visiting art galleries that are within an easy drive from my home in the Lower Hudson Valley--places such as Peep Space in Tarrytown or CB Gallery in Katonah and The Katonah and Aldrich Museums. I truly miss going to art openings and being able to support my fellow artists. I joined Instagram a year before the pandemic started and that has been acting like my visual lifeline to see art and what other artists are creating and inspired by. I follow many artists on Instagram-mainly women and I am truly energized to see what others are creating in their studios on a daily basis.
Who are some of your favorite artists? Or who has been inspirational recently?
"11v", 2019, 48 pieces of wood with acrylic paint, sand with matte medium, 14" x 25" x 21".
I find inspiration these days mainly looking at the nature that surrounds me with all its beauty and complexity. But of course I stand on the shoulders of many wonderful artists that have come before me: Ruth Asawa, Gego, Emma Kunz, Eva Hesse, Lee Bonticou, Louise Bougeois, Jay DeFeo, Mary Ann Unger, Georgian Houghton, Agnes Pelton, Karl Blossfeldt, Hilma af Klint and current artists such as: Martin Puryear, Andy Goldsworthy, Simone Leigh, Phyllida Barlow, Ursula von Rydingsvard and so many others too numerous to mention, but top of this list are all my Instagram peeps too.
Do you have any shows coming up? Anything else you would like to share?
I am currently in a show at The Katonah Museum called “Cladogram” curated by Yasmeen Siddiqui from Minerva Projects that will be closing very soon. Next month I’ll have a drawing in an exhibit at The Broad Center of MIT and Harvard called “Marking Lives Covid”. There are a couple of other online exhibits that I’m part of: “Refresh” with ODETTA Gallery on Artsy and “Open To Interpretation” with the Katonah Museum of Art Artists Association. There are also a number of other exhibitions that are still in the works and it looks like they will come to fruition next year sometime.
Loren Eiferman’s work is included in our show “Transcendental States,” September 15th - October 15th, 2021. Visit her work at loreneifermanart.com or on Instagram @loreneiferman