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 "Flowers with Fence," left, and "Bird Chorus" were painted by Jeanine Klein on paper derived from elephant droppings. Klein has a solo show in Port Jefferson. WHAT Use the Elephants," a solo show by Jeanine Klein WHEN! WHERE Through Sept. 21 at Gallery 4222, 318 Wynn Lane, Port Jefferson INFO Free; gallery4222.com; 631-473-5422 |
| Dung at the gallery with no controversy BY STEVE PARKS steve.parks@newsday.com Why is a psychotherapist from Stony Brook creating abstract watercolors on paper derived from elephant dung? Well, there's a certain consistency here. Both her brush strokes and the excreted fiber that makes up the paper on which she applies those strokes are from Asian sources. Her art is in the style known as sumi-e, a Japanese word for ink painting. Jeanine Klein, who has all but given up her practice for her art, won best in show for "Bird Chorus" at last year's National Sumi-e Society exhibit at the Long Island Art League's Dix Hills gallery. Now she has a solo show, "Use the Elephants," at Gallery 4222 in Port Jefferson: ON THE DUNG TRAIL Klein discovered elephant dung paper on a trip to Thailand. She likes the way lightly applied ink and watercolors are absorbed on the grainy surface, similar to rice paper — another surface she uses. |
No less an artist than Picasso
praised the discipline hand_hewn paper requires. Klein says she
"loves the way accidents spread unexpectedly." By "accident" she
means that color and line spread on the variably absorbent rough
surface, creating textures that aren't altogether predictable but in
skilled hands are directed into expressive patterns. "I seek the
essence rather than the specifics," she says. "I don't do
representation." FINDING THE ESSENCE So how does Klein know what "essence" she's looking for? The piece she calls "Beethoven," for instance, was executed "while listening to one of his quartets." SKIP THE BLASPHEMY But why elephant dung? It has nothing to do with the 1998 Chris Ofili painting at the Brooklyn Museum that enraged then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Klein says. Ofili's depiction of the Virgin Mary incorporated globs of pachyderm dung, suggesting, he said, fertility. Giuliani saw only blasphemy. All you see in the paper Klein uses is the disinfected fiber that is necessary in the production of any paper. It's a natural and green procedure — well, brown at least — that first drew Klein's attention because she thought it saved trees. "But then I learned that elephants are pretty rough on trees, eating the vegetation" — they are, after all, voracious vegetarians — "and rubbing the bark off as they scratch themselves." |