About the Artist

ARTIST BIO

Elaine Langerman earned her MFA from the University of Maryland. She knew she wanted to become an artist when she won a prize for a drawing in second grade. She is married with two children and has traveled throughout the US, Europe and Japan. She makes paintings, collages, sculptures and one-of- a-kind mixed media books. She is inspired by Medieval and Persian illuminated manuscripts and Majolica ware (the relief kind) as well as by the work of Klee, Cornell, Miro and Ernst.

ARTIST STATEMENT

This video shows, step-by-step, how “Forgotten Dream” was made. The process is not necessarily a logical one during which everything gets done in batches. First I covered the porous styrofoam spheres with acrylic modeling paste and a layer of black gesso. They were partially painted with their thick red and thin white stripes when I began to fashion the creatures on to be placed on top out of self-hardening paper clay. As the snake with the cat head was drying, I began the twin, twig heads.

And so it went, back and forth, so that when one part of the sculpture was in the process of drying, another would be brought along. I would continually need to check that all four spheres could still fit into the box, that the layers of paint would not make them too fat to fit!! The painting of the box with its pattern and scene was begun rather late in the process. Slowly, patiently, I worked on each section till finally the sculpture was complete. I knew something about how I wanted it to look, but there was, of course, some improvising as well.

PERMANENT COLLECTIONS
  • DC Commission of the Arts and Humanities / Art Bank Collection
  • Ray Johnson Archive, Richard L. Feigen $ Co., New York, NY
  • Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Washington, DC
  • National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC
  • University of Southern California’s Lewis Carroll Alice Collection
  • Verman Kimbrough Memorial Library at Ringling College of Art and Design
  • George Mason University, Fenwick Library, Special Collections, Artist Book Collection, Fairfax, VA
  • Chicago Center for Book & Paper Arts, Columbia College, Chicago, IL
  • University of Toledo Libraries, Toledo, OH
  • Union College, Schaffer Library, Special Collections, Schenectady, NY
  • Indiana University / Perdue University at Indianapolis, Herron Art Library, Artist Book Collection
  • Szent Istvan Kiraly Muzeum (King St. Stephen Museum), Szekesfehervar, Hungary
  • Denver Art Museum (formerly), Denver, CO
  • Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center (presently), Colorado Springs, CO
  • Chase Manhattan Bank of New York, New York, NY
  • Exeter Oil Company
  • Chemical Bank of New York
  • Judith A. Hoffberg Archive at the Library, University of California, Santa Barbara
  • National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD
  • University of California Irvine Library, Special Collections
  • University of California, Santa Barbara Davis Library, Special Collections
  • University of Tulsa, McFarlin Library, Special Collections
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS

Elaine received a fellowship artist grant from the DC Commission for the Arts and Humanities, 2018-2019

  • 2010 Exhibition, Town Hall of Chapel Hill, NC
  • 2008 Three-artist Exhibit, The Arts Club of Washington, Washington, DC
  • 2007 Musings, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD
  • 2009 32nd Small Works Show, Washington Square East Galleries, New York University, NY, NY
  • 2008 Artists Book Exhibition, Owl & Lion Gallery, Edinburgh, Scotland
  • 2008 The Art of the Book ’08, Canadian Bookbinders & Book Artists Guild, Toronto, Ontario, Canada (travel throughout Canada until 2010)
  • 2007 All in the Family: A Juried Show of American University Alumni, American University Katzen Center, Washington, DC
  • 2007 Beaux & Eros II, Peninsula Museum of Art, Belmont, CA
  • 2003 Wexford Artist 1 Bookshow, Wexford Arts Centre, Wexford, Ireland (2003-2004)
  • 1994 Miniature Show, Vartai Gallery, Vilnius, Lithuania
  • 2004 Matter & Spirit, Wells Books Art Centers, Wells College Aurora, New York
  • 2003 In Flight, traveling book exhibit, till 2005, Guild of Book Workers
  • 2002 Women of the Book, Judith Hoffberg, Curator
  • 1997 – 2002 (travel throughout the US) resumed 2003, 2004, 2005
  • 2000 Work included in: Dreams: 1900 – 2000, Science, Art and the Unconscious Mind, Gamwell, Hartmann, Kuspit; Cornell University Press, 2000
  • 1995 Fellowship, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Greenbriar, VA
  • 1992 – 2005, seven grants from the DC Commission of the Humanities

Other: 2008 Cover art for The Horizontal Society, Jose Faur, Academic Studies Press, Brighton, MA

LINKS
The following are some interviews and Galleries where you can learn more about my work.
REVIEWS

“I am overwhelmed! These are so beautiful, so mesmerizing, so inviting to enter. I did not think it was possible, because your pieces were already so incredible, but you have grown! I get this feeling that a magical witch, both tempting and terrifying wants to invite me into some world, one that promises so so much but also threatens in some way, I can’t stop looking. I always loved your work, am proud of the one I own, but this… wow. How proud I am to know you for some thirty years.”

— Erika Passantino

(Erika was recently awarded the Atlanta Writers Club Rick Bragg Non-Fiction Essay for 2018.  Published in The Blue Mountain Review, which at the same time published a poem called “R Street.”

“Wow. I’ve been up and down on her web site. I REALLY like her work. I think she’s very talented — but that’s beside the point. Her work appeals to my soul. Thanks for sharing.”

Mary Nell McLauchlin