Artist Statement: Ellie Pierson

Ellie Pierson: Overlapping Leaves, 2007; video. Courtesy of the artist.

An artist once suggested that a work of art is a simplified model of a complex and unmanageable situation. My friend firmly believes that what "you've gotta do is put your head down and drive it home with bird like colors and shiny open tooth house." In a world full of distracting and irrelevant stimuli, I respond in what seems to be a random, yet artistically-minded fashion. Survival is a given, surprise is a luxury, and distraction is a pasttime. My niche, in this particular case, is roughly 13 by 13 feet. Putting my head down and driving it home is both instinctual and erratic behavior. While the bower bird works elaborately to construct an avenue in which he can ornament and perform his display for the female, his exceptionally "artistic" style is unlike mine. As a human being I am to varying degrees caught up in a whirlwind of self-reflexivity. The structure of a thing is given shape through context. There is the gravity of a thing in space, while there is the weight of it also in our minds. My questions and ensuing investigations into the peculiarities of existence have taken me to the door of elaboration, through excess and dissipation, to simplification and even a nihilism of sorts. Some things you cannot see, but may be able to imagine, like the sound of a harpsichord coming from a guitar, or simply someone playing the flute with a quick and Caribbean breath as I am boiling an egg or mix up a simple concoction of sugar and water. Luckily, 'ART' fits my style. It is just another invariant. Oops! I mean variant. Move the letters around and what do you get? RAT! TAR! What? A rodent? A despicable person? A solid residue of tobacco smoke? One experiment, a million variables? One variable, a million experiments? What with the time passing and all like it does, you have to ask yourself whether or not you want to conceptualize or celebrate. Is this really an unmanageable situation? Of course I realize that I am playing a game. The work amounts to something of a Candy Land. At the end, after the pieces are put away, it will fold in on itself. I didn't make up the rules, but it sure feels nice to be able to rearrange them every once in a while. There are choices I absolutely have to make within all of this re-con and de-con-structioning. I have made them at Shultz Drive and Tate, Nolenstraat and Benjamin Street. Intersecting streets are a matter of infinity. I will stop or go, pick up a metaphor and wear it as a sleeve, shiny and taffeta (or a sweatband if I am running) . whatever makes the most sense at the time. Woe betide that man or woman who can go through his or her days satisfied without the glory of surprise! Oh to be interrupted, to be called out of boredom. It fits my style. And yet I convict my own self for not having a sense of satisfaction. I realize this isn.t the seventies anymore. Or the eighties. It is not even the nineties. In fact, it is April of two thousand and eight. Is this any bit surprising? It.s a variant! I mean invariant!

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