Research at AAS

I came to AAS about 20 years ago when phone-cameras were nonexistent and many of the printed materials I looked at were too rare and delicate to put even near a copy machine. Using only what was allowed in the library; plain pencil, eraser, ruler—and I slowly filled many pages with careful records.This past summer, I found a few notebooks from that time and include a shot here.

Sketchbook from AAS, 2002, open sketchbook measures 9 x 13”, each page 9 x 6.5", pencil. Click the image above to view the full notebook page.

Worcester really impressed me. I liked the town’s layers of blue collar and blue-stocking histories and the view up to the archive holding it all on the hill. Poking around I accidentally discovered Worcester’s relationship to wire production and it’s fabled contribution to the transatlantic cable. I felt that my fellowship was a re-wiring too, connecting my academic research in new ways to my studio pursuits. I hadn’t seen my drawings as ends in themselves since student days until I began to make printing plates from my AAS notebooks. My reading-room time rekindled daily sketching- and since then, I don’t travel or read without a way to draw notes.

‘Laying Cable’ was an early panoramic piece made with hand-printed pages I drew at AAS. My sense of drawing, and the page itself has expanded exponentially ever since.

Laying Cable, 2010, 17.5 x 47”, Lithographic transfer, oil, ink, hand color. Click the image above to view the full panoramic piece.

Longhand Forest- working studio draft, 2014-17, 70 x 216”, ink on paper with transfers. Click the image above to view the entire working studio draft.

Margin and Scree, 2011, 5.5” x 10 feet, mixed media on paper. Editioned 2012, in signed set of 8 with hand- bound silk removable covers. Click the image above to view the full panoramic piece.

About the Fellow

Ellen Wiener is a painter, printmaker and diarist who often collaborates with writers and literary sources. Recently she has been included in exhibitions at The Staatsbiliothek in Berlin, PS 1 MoMA, The Center for Book Arts NYC, Bainbridge Museum, The Parrish Museum, Heckscher Museum, Islip Museum, Constellation Studios, Central Booking Gallery and Vanderbilt University. She has been a visiting artist/faculty at The New School for Social Research, Sarah Lawrence Writer’s Institute, Princeton University, Brooklyn College, Haverford, University New Mexico, Washington University, Louisiana State University, Suffolk Community, SUNY Stony Brook, CUNY Queens, and Dartmouth. She lives on the North Fork of Long Island.