May: ELAINE LONGTEMPS |

Elaine Longtemps

My work has been described as both whimsical and wild, both beautiful and very pungent. In actuality, I’m drawing with the rope, as I see each colored rope as a line. I gather them all together and forcefully twist them into contorted positions against which they writhe and then spring wildly free and eventually succumb to the power of gravity. They actually change over a period of time; they are alive. At the same time, I have a message, the message being sometimes very specific with words printed on strips of fabric and at other times more abstruse; but basically, it refers to the musically delicate and at the same time violent forces of nature and man, which, despite the ways in which we try to contain and constrain it and ourselves with levies and laws, rules and regulations, prisons and dams… will have its way. Weeds will grow despite our weeding; vines will choke despite our pruning; man will be inhuman despite our rules and regulations.