The Edge of Abstraction
Diane Pieri and Erin Elman explore the interplay between abstraction, color, and materiality, inviting viewers into a space where beauty, memory, and meaning converge. Identifying as a Symbolic Abstractionist, Pieri transforms the historical concept of naval flotillas into formations of flowers and foliage, shifting the focus from conflict to beauty and interconnectedness. Through decorative papers and delicately layered compositions, Pieri crafts microcosms that hover at the edge of abstraction. Her work, influenced by cultural traditions from Japan, India, and Tibet, mediates the universal desire for beauty in everyday life, using gold leaf and rich, textured papers to evoke timeless elegance.
Similarly, Elman’s paintings are a meditative exploration of color as both a language and a bridge between conscious and subconscious realms. Her works are built on the tension between intentionality and spontaneity, where the marks, gestures, and vibrant hues engage in a dance of expansion and contraction. Elman draws from both Eastern and Western traditions, weaving ancestral memory and lived experience into a layered, dynamic dialogue that seeks not to define truth but to evoke a shared, momentary experience. Together, Pieri and Elman’s work creates a space where abstract forms and vibrant color invite reflection on the complex relationships between history, culture, and the act of creation itself.
Erin Elman
Artist Bio:
Erin Elman was born in Brooklyn, NY, where she was raised by two remarkable New York City public school teachers who exposed their daughters to all of the great art and culture of New York City. She received a BFA in Art from Carnegie Mellon University and studied in Rome, where she fell in love with Etruscan art and ruins. She received an MA in Art Education and an MFA in Book Arts/Printmaking from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. She has artwork in numerous public and private collections, including the Tate London. Elman lives in a stone cottage in the Mt. Airy section of Philadelphia.
Artist Statement:
My paintings are love notes to color. Color serves as a language to signify feeling, a system for navigating the interstitial distance between line and the space it inhabits, a bridge that links the expansion of gesture and the contraction of the material. This act of painting embodies notions of the sacred through repetition coupled with the surprise of spontaneity as I seek the moment in my paintings and balance it within the space that holds it. The works link my lived experiences to my ancestral memory, which connects to sites and objects beyond familiarity.
This belies an attempted truce between intentionality and spontaneity; between the mindful and the subconscious; the material and the ethereal; and representation and abstraction. My paintings are negotiations between expanding and contracting dialectics which serve as evidence of internal struggles and dialogues composed of layers, marks, gestures, and of course, color.
My practice cycles between research, revision, ritual, and instinct, remaining rooted in history, memory, place and time. The marks reference a multitude of systems, both Western and Eastern in origin. I seek to meet the viewer where they are, aspiring not towards truths or falsehoods but rather a momentary shared experience.
Diane Pieri
Artist Bio:
Since 1969, Pieri has had 24 solo exhibitions and 170 national and international group exhibitions. She has been the recipient of two Pollock-Krasner Grants (1999/1992), an Independence Foundation Fellowship in the Arts (2001), and a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Grant (1992). She was included in the 2005 Philadelphia Invitational Portfolio, Philagrafika. She has been a fellow at Yaddo (1991) and the MacDowell Colony (1990). In 1990, Pieri was an Artist-in-Residence at Mark diSuvero’s Socrates Sculpture Park, where she created a 15 ft. sculpture. In 2006, Pieri’s public art project, Manayunk Stoops: Heart and Home, a series of 9 seating elements fabricated in Italian tesserae, was installed along the Manayunk towpath through the Fairmount Park Art Association’s New Land Marks Program. Pieri has completed 9 murals since 2001 working with Philadelphia's Mural Arts Program. In 2008, she completed a mural at College Station, Texas. In 2005, Pieri founded the Cooke Museum of Art, which was modeled after the Philadelphia Museum of Art, at the Jay Cooke Elementary School in North Philadelphia. This museum is the only museum established within a Philadelphia public school.
Statement:
In 2024 it occurred to me, when I was searching for a new form of expression, that I could repurpose some old prints into books, books made from one piece of paper and then embellish them using collage, cut decorative papers from Japan, India and Nepal, paint, block printing, drawing, punches, stencils and thread. And, this is what I did.These paper structures are also cut into, expanded, contracted and built upon. But, the basic first step was/is to fold a print into a book form.
The prints I used are from three separate editions, printed at different times and with different printing workshops.
In 1995, I was invited to be a Guest Artist at the Brandywine Workshop in Philadelphia.
Tears of Poorness, 5 color offset lithograph, with hand painted gold, 23” x 30”, is the result of this residency. The print is an image taken from my series, The Tears off Living, which were painted pages on papyrus that were separated by a vertical Thai silk spine. The series dealt with political issues of the day like poverty, children killed in the cross fire, assisted suicide, violent assassinations of doctors who performed abortions. The pages were meant to stay flat and would never be made into a book.
In 2005, I was one of eight artists selected to make a print for the Philagrafika Portfolio, 2005. I was paired with The Borowsky Center for Publication Arts, The University of the Arts, Philadelphia
Moonlight Over Meru, 9 color offset lithograph, 18” x 15”, is the result of that printing collaboration. The softness of the imagery, the specific cloud shapes and the color were influenced by my trip to Japan, funded by The Independence Foundation.
In 2012, I was awarded another Artist Grant from The Independence Foundation, to travel to India, my wellspring of inspiration for over 25 years. Using a designated portion of grant money in order to work with Master Printer, Cindi Ettinger, I made a suite of 5 colored etchings called Intimate Whispers, based on collected images and reflections on that pivotal experience. Cindi printed 10 suites.I have made one sculptural book using just black ink on some of the whisper images and enhanced them with drawing using a black Sharpie.
Since the first experimental book, this process has morphed into 24 Sculptural Books. The process also led me to repurpose some paintings from my 1997 series, Fire Danger High.
