Studio Visit with Emma Jane Levitt

I met with Emma on a rare, stormy summer evening. The clouds were rolling in outside her Queen Anne live/work studio overlooking Elliott Bay. As we talked over dinner, thunder rumbled in the distance, and rain threatened. Like many artists, Emma shares her living space with her work space. For a curator, visiting live/work studios are especially enlightening and a privilege to see the how personal space may be informing the work.

For full disclosure, not only is Emma a participating artist and the co-curator of To Be Alone Together, but I've known Emma for several years now, and have had the honor of being her friend as she developed as an artist. Her first solo show in Seattle was at the Center for Wooden Boats Boathouse Gallery, a new gallery effort we spearheaded together to bring more art to South Lake Union and infuse the Boathouse space with new energy. At the time she was engaged in a body of landscape photography entitled Time & Tide, a mesmerizing series of color images taken on a broken medium format camera, where the film would advance in unpredictable ways.

Union Bay, 2010

You see, Emma loves to explore our Northwest landscape and experiment and infuse the element of the unknown into her work. As I've discovered through the years, as she has immersed her practice in printmaking and book arts, she is wholly fascinated with materials and finding new and interesting ways to manipulate them, or one might say, discovering how to let them manipulate her. She is most at home in her work when she can let go of any preconceived notions of what she should be making and just play with materials to see what happens.

One section of Emma's live/work studio, where pattern and simple objects inspire

On the night of our stormy studio visit she described working as an artist in To Be Alone Together as a challenge for just that reason. The problem is that she is walking the line between curator and artist, jumping from one to the other as necessary, often within the same day. While enjoying the curatorial process very much, as an artist Emma has found it hard to break away from what she knows about the project and the Jeremy Lepisto bridge piece assigned to her, to just let herself play with materials as she normally would.

Despite working within these limiting parameters, she is pulling in a few comfortable "languages," as she calls them. For To Be Alone Together, those are paper, cyanotype, and paper folding/cutting. Drawing from the form and concept of the Lepisto glass piece, she is developing a series of works on paper that reveal her minimalist, sculptural tendencies. "I like work that is subtle and smart, where as much information as possible has been stripped away," notes Emma when describing how she felt inspired by Lepisto's luminescent bridge, that to her, looks more like a vessel underwater.

Her first ideas of cutting and folding, then adding color.

"I was really interested in the idea that I could create something out of one piece of paper, and the folding and cutting of it could generate something different…I like the secret world that exists behind the piece. I was compelled by this shape and idea of water, a bridging structure that was connected, but separated at the same time. I started to get excited about this very simple suggestion of three dimensional space."

After her first couple of experiments with an accordion fold and blue gouache, Emma decided to simplify the concept and use geometry and exacting measurements to play with circles on silky Japanese paper. (Shown below is Kitakata, one of my personal favorites). Compelled by the elegance of the sliver shape of the Lepisto piece, Emma's cuts and folds create bridges and rhythm between the circles, much like the motion of waves.

Meticulously drawn circles, and slivers of shelves
will be blue-printed with cyanotype

Next in her experimentation with these materials will be to introduce the photo/print process of cyanotype to the work. "I've been very seduced by cyanotype in the last year or two," she says. Her recent work with cyanotype in artist books and prints exemplify her ability to harness this medium and to use the brilliant blue to great effect.

One of Emma's many artist books, look for those utilizing cyanotype on her website soon.

Bookmaking projects, plants and Emma.

As usual, I am in awe of Emma's tenacity. Not only was she willing to take on the challenge of acting as both curator and artist in To Be Alone Together, (at the same time teaching workshops and still pursing her MFA at University of New Mexico) but she moved through the initial hurdle of over-thinking the work to harness her own voice and try something completely new to her practice.

As we clean up and notice the time and impending storm still brewing, I ask our final question.  "To be alone or together, Emma?"

"Ah! I've been debating this for weeks!" she says with alacrity. "Both? I think I'm an extraordinarily extroverted introvert. I need that time and space to be together, but I can't do it without the solitude. I need a good amount of personal space. More than I often give myself."

Emma's thesis work, West (for Joy Harjo), will show at Gallery 4Culture next spring.


Find out more about Emma and her artwork on her website: www.emmajanelevitt.com