The Edge of Abstraction
Diane Pieri and Erin Elman explore the interplay between abstraction, color, and materiality, inviting viewers into a space where beauty, memory, and meaning converge. Identifying as a Symbolic Abstractionist, Pieri transforms the historical concept of naval flotillas into formations of flowers and foliage, shifting the focus from conflict to beauty and interconnectedness. Through decorative papers and delicately layered compositions, Pieri crafts microcosms that hover at the edge of abstraction. Her work, influenced by cultural traditions from Japan, India, and Tibet, mediates the universal desire for beauty in everyday life, using gold leaf and rich, textured papers to evoke timeless elegance.
Similarly, Elman’s paintings are a meditative exploration of color as both a language and a bridge between conscious and subconscious realms. Her works are built on the tension between intentionality and spontaneity, where the marks, gestures, and vibrant hues engage in a dance of expansion and contraction. Elman draws from both Eastern and Western traditions, weaving ancestral memory and lived experience into a layered, dynamic dialogue that seeks not to define truth but to evoke a shared, momentary experience. Together, Pieri and Elman’s work creates a space where abstract forms and vibrant color invite reflection on the complex relationships between history, culture, and the act of creation itself.
Erin Elman
Artist Bio:
Erin Elman was born in Brooklyn, NY, where she was raised by two remarkable New York City public school teachers who exposed their daughters to all of the great art and culture of New York City. She received a BFA in Art from Carnegie Mellon University and studied in Rome, where she fell in love with Etruscan art and ruins. She received an MA in Art Education and an MFA in Book Arts/Printmaking from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. She has artwork in numerous public and private collections, including the Tate London. Elman lives in a stone cottage in the Mt. Airy section of Philadelphia.
Artist Statement:
My paintings are love notes to color. Color serves as a language to signify feeling, a system for navigating the interstitial distance between line and the space it inhabits, a bridge that links the expansion of gesture and the contraction of the material. This act of painting embodies notions of the sacred through repetition coupled with the surprise of spontaneity as I seek the moment in my paintings and balance it within the space that holds it. The works link my lived experiences to my ancestral memory, which connects to sites and objects beyond familiarity.
This belies an attempted truce between intentionality and spontaneity; between the mindful and the subconscious; the material and the ethereal; and representation and abstraction. My paintings are negotiations between expanding and contracting dialectics which serve as evidence of internal struggles and dialogues composed of layers, marks, gestures, and of course, color.
My practice cycles between research, revision, ritual, and instinct, remaining rooted in history, memory, place and time. The marks reference a multitude of systems, both Western and Eastern in origin. I seek to meet the viewer where they are, aspiring not towards truths or falsehoods but rather a momentary shared experience.
Diane Pieri
Artist Bio:
Since 1969, Pieri has had 24 solo exhibitions and 170 national and international group exhibitions. She has been the recipient of two Pollock-Krasner Grants (1999/1992), an Independence Foundation Fellowship in the Arts (2001), and a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Grant (1992). She was included in the 2005 Philadelphia Invitational Portfolio, Philagrafika. She has been a fellow at Yaddo (1991) and the MacDowell Colony (1990). In 1990, Pieri was an Artist-in-Residence at Mark diSuvero’s Socrates Sculpture Park, where she created a 15 ft. sculpture. In 2006, Pieri’s public art project, Manayunk Stoops: Heart and Home, a series of 9 seating elements fabricated in Italian tesserae, was installed along the Manayunk towpath through the Fairmount Park Art Association’s New Land Marks Program. Pieri has completed 9 murals since 2001 working with Philadelphia's Mural Arts Program. In 2008, she completed a mural at College Station, Texas. In 2005, Pieri founded the Cooke Museum of Art, which was modeled after the Philadelphia Museum of Art, at the Jay Cooke Elementary School in North Philadelphia. This museum is the only museum established within a Philadelphia public school.
Artist Statement:
I consider myself a Symbolic Abstractionist, incorporating meaningful symbols into fields of abstraction. The paintings shown here began with the idea of flotillas-naval ships moving in formations. I wanted to take this concept, one historically used for war like maneuvers, and switch it into a realm of beauty. Thus the big floating floral and foliage images are flotillas in a world where war is not an option. This is overlaid with the belief in the abstract expressionist concept of overall composition as I create mini flotilla formations in the hundreds of tiny collaged decorative papers and painted configurations hovering around, near and with the large flotillas. Each area becomes a symbolic microcosm many times hovering at the edge leaving the center open. The openness is symbolic of air, breath, breathing itself. The touch of an artist, the weight of the hand, is considered. I want my work to feel light to the touch, yet lingering. My overarching desire is to make art that beautifies life’s experiences.
Gold leaf is an important tool of mine because it portrays a timeless and universal elegance. I use Gampi paper because of its limpness and color, Chiyogami papers for their decorativeness. Previous work, over a period of 12 years, has been done on papyrus, Abaca, linen, flax, Cave papers, Mexican Bark papers and Indian Lokta. I choose papers that bring with them an ethnic collaboration. Aesthetically my work is a weave of Japan, India and Tibet, cultures wealthy in meaning, symbol, color and purposeful design and whose need for beauty in everyday life is uncompromised.
