Jonathan Williams

Feature Writing
September 16, 2016

Sculpture artist combines the delicate and rough through steel and fabric

Artist Ellen Wishnetsky-Mueller painted for more than 35 years before

becoming allergic to the materials, awakening her interest in 3-
dimensional work that combined her love of fabric and steel through
sculpture.

I never thought flat again after that, she said.

Wishnetsky-Muellers show Material Witness is on view now through

Oct. 29 at Jeffrey Thomas Fine Art in Northwest Portland. Her work
combines seemingly unrelated materials like hard, jagged steel from a
scrapyard with lush, delicate tulle creating vulnerable objects that
show a masculine and feminine relationship through her sculptures
adding a unique addition to the Portland art scene.

While steel isnt typically what people think of when they think of art,
Wishnetsky-Mueller sees a strong, raw beauty in the steel and its
history. Maybe it was used as something else, maybe it was part of
some kind of structure. Once I went to the steel yard and I saw all
these beautiful kind of lost pieces I just fell in love, she said.

Transforming the steel by bending it and scratching lines in its surface

also plays a significant role in Wishnetsky-Muellers creation of each
piece. I add different things to different pieces of metal its not just
all found, I transform it.

One of Wishnetsky-Muellers most arresting pieces titled Diahasense

is one that she scratched lines into. Many viewers think the piece looks
like a book, as the steel is bent with one side of it on the floor and the
other tilted open, making it look like a book with the fabric positioned
inside it.

I think that there is a softness and a feminine side to the fabric and I
think that the metal has got a masculine hardness to it. Each of them
compliments the other. I dont think you can have one without the
other, she said.

Working with sculpture for the past seven years, Wishnetsky-Mueller

lived in Ashland for 20 years before moving to Portland two and half
years ago to live closer to her daughter and grandchild.
Born in New York and raised in Detroit, she attended the Parsons
School of Design in New York studying fashion design and did
illustration and graphic design for advertisers until her daughter was
born.

I knew I was an artist at 10 years old. We used to draw maps in school

and color them and I knew right then that was what I wanted to do and
I never stopped, she said.
Wishnetsky-Muellers wedding of steel and fabric comes from her
upbringing, with the steel coming from her childhood in Detroit and the
fabric relating to her mothers job as a decorator.

I like to achieve a softness in the steel as well as softness in the

fabric, Wishnetsky-Mueller said.

Returning to her childhood, Wishnetsky-Mueller created a piece that

was inspired by her days as a young ballerina. She embodies this in the
work by combining tulle in reference to dance and a sleek, curved
piece of steel that goes around the tulle to show the rigid structure of
ballet.

Putting her idea of dual softness into practice, one of her featured
pieces uses layers of brown felt made entirely from melted down
recycled plastic bottles, which she puts up against a curved piece of
steel that has a weathered, brown exterior to match the felt.

Wishnetsky-Muellers work focuses highly on repetition and the human

experience. One of her pieces has many lines and numerous layers of
fabric stacked on top of one another and was inspired by the lines in
the bluffs behind her and her husbands home when they lived in
Ashland.

Her work also draws strongly from nature and her memories. We go
through all the changes of the seasons and changes in life. Life and
death and tenderness and hardness and coldness and warmth,
Wishnetsky-Mueller said.

When shes working in her studio, Wishnetsky-Mueller likes to surround

herself with various materials to create her sculptures. I take
materials from here and there and everywhere and mix different
materials. I love the tactile element of one-inch thick felt to gossamer
silk to little cocoons.

Wishnetsky-Muellers creative process is highly experimental and none

of her work is pre-planned, as she often works on five or six pieces at
once. I can be working on a very small, little torn paper piece that
really delicate and pink and then I can also be working on one of those
great galvanized steel pieces. Its not a linear process.

She also recognizes that some people might see her art making
process as light weight. Its not its hard work. [They] go through
many, many incarnations tons of them, she said.

Ellen continues one of the Northwest art scenes most engaging

practices of artists working ideas across different media like Malia
Jensen, Christine Bourdette and Brian Borrello, all artists working in
3-dimensional, sculptural work, gallery owner Jeffrey Thomas said.

Recognizing her precision and artistic maturity, Thomas said that

Portland doesnt have a lot of great sculptors and Wishnetsky-Mueller is
helping fill that void. She really knows just how much attention to give
each piece. She doesnt repeat herself.

Thomas said that he sees a reflection to todays world through

Wishnetsky-Muellers work. I find in these pieces this tremendous soft
quality, almost a heart to these pieces, but then theres always often a
hard, jagged dehiscence a jagged edge, he said.