www.loreneifermanart.com

@Loreneiferman

Words:

“I try to follow that inner stream of connection where place and time melt away and my art can communicate the deeper questions and truths we all share.”

- Loren Eiferman

Five Questions:

Loren Eiferman

1. How do you get in the right mindset to make your work? Do you have a particular strategy?

I had a wonderful professor in college who always said, “just put your body in the position of working, and the work will follow”.  I have adopted that wise counsel as my daily mantra for years.  I show up almost daily in my studio.  Some days I am more focused than others, but whatever my energy level is, I stand and face my worktable as soon as I enter my studio and then the work always starts to flow.  Also, when I am done for the day, I try and leave a section that I was working on incomplete.  So, when I enter my studio the next day, I have a specific mission:  I can immediately start working on a known task, which sets a productive tone for the day.  For me, it’s frequently the beginning/the starting which is the most challenging. 

2. How did you arrive at your current art practice? Was there a pivotal moment that got you there?

I studied sculpture throughout high school and college.  After I graduated, I moved into a tiny three-room apartment in NYC. One of those small rooms became my art studio.  Even though I studied sculpture, my passion at the time was painting large, abstracted landscape oil paintings.  In my studio, I had three studio walls, frequently working on two to three paintings at a time. One very hot and humid August day, my small studio walls were covered with paintings that wouldn’t dry due to the excessive humidity outside.  I was hot and bored because I had no more space to start a new painting.  

I am a person that always needs to be making something, so I suddenly picked up a piece of balsa wood that had been intended for an entirely different purpose and a straight edged razor blade that was on my drafting table.  I started whittling away, almost in a trance. Literally eight hours flew by, and when I finally emerged from this very zen-like state, I realized that I was a sculptor, not a painter!  My work has progressed from that eureka moment. I started collecting small sticks then larger branches, hauling them back from Central Park on the NYC subway to my new studio. I progressed from using straight edge razor blades to whittling tools to now using a flexible shaft tool. I currently live surrounded by nature so collecting tree limbs and branches is now second nature to me. 

3. What does an ideal studio day look like for you?

An ideal day for me is getting to my studio in the late morning and immediately start engaging in my work. Being in the ‘zone’ is key, with no outside distractions. Ideally all my tools function well and don’t break. All my pencils stay sharp. My supply of essential materials hasn’t run too low or become lost under a pile that I forgot to clean up the day before. All the wood that I want to use is well seasoned and not rotted out. I would work till around noon when I break for breakfast/lunch. After I eat and read the newspaper, I go back into my studio and work till dinner time. I find that my sweet spot is 6-8 hours of studio time. I might move from working on a drawing or a small painting in the morning to constructing a sculpture in the afternoon and evening. When I am finished for the day, I change out of my studio clothes, and reflect upon what I’ve accomplished, feeling a profound a sense of satisfaction. That is an ideal working day.

4.  How do you unplug/ Is it necessary for you to do so? If so, why?

I start every day with a walk.  Looking at nature and being surrounded by it, feeds me on another level.  Whether it’s walking in my garden, or in the woods and roads surrounding my home/studio, I’ve discovered that I need to walk many miles daily to keep my body and brain connection active.  Looking at the changing seasons, the cloud formations and just breathing in deeply reconnects me to this Earth.  I usually do some of my clearest thinking and plotting out my latest work on these needed walks.  At first glance, my sculpture can look simple, but my work is actually fairly complicated to build, figuring out how to connect all these different intersecting parts into a whole form requires much planning. I find I need these walks to create a master plan of how to proceed step by step. I am inspired daily by all the nature that surrounds me and return to my studio renewed, not only with a road map of how to proceed but also with sticks, branches, and pockets full of seed pods or other natures treasures.  I’m not sure this is exactly unplugging, but these walks and treasures inform my daily art practice and create the necessary head space for me to power through my day in an inspired manner. 

5. If you could hang your work next to any other artist’s work whose work would it be?

This is a very interesting question and after much thought, I realized that in my dream exhibition, my work would be displayed next to the Voynich Manuscript. This mysterious manuscript was believed to have been written sometime in the late 15th century, in an unknown language by an unknown author and filled with illustrations of plants that scientifically do not exist in nature. For the past five years I have been obsessively translating many of these strange botanical illustrations into wood sculptures. The manuscript is currently housed at Yale’s Beinecke Book Library, and it would truly be a dream to exhibit my work next to this illusive manuscript that I continue to find so inspiring and captivating.

And One More…

Do you have any advice to give artists that you would like to share?

Artists work alone for the most part- yet it’s the reaching outside of the studio bubble and finding like-minded artists, curators, and galleries that’s also so important. Find the community of your supportive peeps-whether it’s going to artists talks, visiting other artists’ studios or even discovering new artists on Instagram. It has taken me decades to discover that it’s these moments of social connections that help propel me forward as much as a full working day in my studio.

Drawings worth craving:

Loren in her studio: