Elizabeth Atterbury breaks the mold

Breaking the mold, metaphorically, is the essence of what Elizabeth Atterbury strives for. An emerging artist who transcends traditional expectations in photography — as well as in her recent inclination to create cut-paper constructions and wooden creations while employing unique raw materials such as cardboard, pumice and sand — she often reverts back to her love of photography by photographing the works she’s created.

Her keen sense of form and how it can work hieroglyphically, as language, seems to channel Miró at times. The objects and shapes she depicts sometimes float in space and then integrate with other repetitious objects in others, creating an almost M.C. Escher impression.

Atterbury, who lives and works in Portland, Maine and holds an MFA from Massachusetts College of Art and Design, and whose exhibitions have graced the likes of Bodega in New York and Heaven Gallery in Chicago, confesses to harboring an interest in what she calls, “objects disassociated from their original function and context.” So her sculptures are almost fragile and impermanent, but they work well for her purpose of capturing them on film. However, her more recent work is motivated by her absorption in abstraction within painting and sculpture.

Although not averse to digital photography, she loves working in an old-fashioned dark room. Evolving from color still-life photography to a passion for black-and-white, her work exudes her love of shadows, hard contrasts and imaginative composition.

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