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Christopher Hart Chambers, “Ruminations in Paper – Drew Shiflett at Lesley Heller Gallery In New York,” Dart International, Volume 12, Number 1, Spring/Summer 2009 Ruminations
in Paper Buzzed in to Lesley Heller’s gallery on the ground floor of a townhouse on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, where we find an intimate space: a converted split level apartment, with a backyard sculpture area – not your standard Manhattan art viewing arena. Drew Shiflett’s work fits well here. It is also intimate, and, it’s obsessively personal. In the front room there were three small framed works, and one larger free hanging piece was clipped to the wall. Rumpled patchworks in muted neutral tones: browns, off whites; grays, and tans are gently crafted from bits of handmade paper scrappily glued together. Quietly maintained squares and multitudes of rhythmically incised lines – long, lengthwise horizontals and short, choppy verticals – crosshatch creating grids a few inches across, again and again. Shiflett’s soft and lovely compositions of underlying geometric shapes and endless demarcations sprawl across the wall, or are incarcerated in frames like bits of ancient tapestry. They look like sections of fabric with custom stitching, but are made using paper, watercolor, conte, and ink. Her work would be lost in a raucous art fair or cavernous Chelsea gallery, but here they command a quiet presence; an island of calm in the molten art world. In the central kitchen area two larger works were on display. One, a little older and more sculptural than the rest of the work in the exhibition, consists of row upon row of little slats of blond paper, like the output from a paper shredder, glued over a gauzy material bunched up at the top like a bed roll. The abstract image on the other piece resembles a truck axel: a square at either end joined by a horizontal linear shape with a bulb in the middle. There is a corridor leading to another small room in the back. In here the compositions were a touch more complex; still subtle, but they incorporate arches and more varied geometrical arrangements. Most of the work has an architectural flavor, they could be blueprints in taupe. Some are reminiscent of Greco Roman ruins – perhaps a coliseum or an ancient bridge, maybe a barren old water conduit in bone dry beige redolent of the eons parched by sun and time. They hold a meditative solemnity; there is an understated eloquence to the repetitive act of their improvisational creation that is ruminative like a visual mantra. |
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Constructed Drawings, essay by Nancy Princenthal, 2011, Guild Hall Museum, East Hampton, New York "Beautiful Dreamer", essay by David Gibson, 2005, SPACES, Cleveland, Ohio “Collection Insights: Drew Shiflett On Linear Thinking,” essay by Janet Goleas, 2004, Islip Art Museum, East Islip, New York “Work in Process,” essay by Kristen Frederickson PhD, 2003 "Making It Up," essay by curators David Finn and Victor Faccinto, 1999 "Correct Me If I'm Wrong," essay by Barry Schwabsky, 1997 In Three Dimensions: Women Sculptors of the '90s, essay by Charlotte Streifer Rubinstein (catalog), '96 Margaret McInroe, “Survival,” Hunter College (catalog), '95 Charles Long, "Critical Mass",Dallas Artists Research (catalog), '94 Kathleen Cullen, "Drew Shiflett", The Interart Center (catalog), '93 Nancy Princenthal, "Idio Cognito" (catalog), '93
Janet Goleas, "An Identity With the Process," The East Hampton Star, November 10, 2011 Elise D’Haene, “The Art Scene – Two Exhibits At Drawing Room,” The East Hampton Star, April 15, 2010 Jennifer Landes, “Artists Do Still Live Here,” The East Hampton Star, May 14, 2009 Elise D’Haene, “The Art Scene – Top Honors For Drew Shiflett,” The East Hampton Star, May 7, 2009 Pat Rogers, “A Show That’s Fun and Exciting,” The Southampton Press, April 30, 2009 Pat Rogers, “350 Artist Members All Under One Roof,” The Easthampton Press, April 29, 2009 Ariella Budick, “A Whiter Shade of Pale Suggesting Angels, DNA,” Newsday, July 20, 2007 Karen Searle, "Plane & Form at Minnesota Center for Book Arts," Hand Papermaking, June Issue 2006 Jill Conner, “CustomFit,” Contemporary, Issue no. 52, 2003 Phoebe Mitchell, "Hampden Gallery Abstracts Invite Viewers Within," Hampshire Gazette, May 1, 2003 Rachel Youens, "In Review - Sculpture at Flipside," Arts, Vol. 1, Number 4, wburg.com, 2001 Holland Cotter, "Sculpture," The New York Times, May 11&18, 2001 Ken Johnson, "Invented Spaces" The New York Times, Jan. 19&26, 2001 Tom Patterson, "New York Explorers" Winston-Salem Journal, Mar. 21, '99 Tom Patterson, "All That Jazz," Winston-Salem Journal, Mar. 7, '99 Annie Herron, "Fresh Perspectives," Review, March 15, '97 Helen A. Harrison, "Artists Who Make Work Out of Play," The New York Times, January 7, '96 Tom Moody, "Critical Mass," Art Papers, July/Aug., '95 Shawn Hill, "Nature's Ordeal," Bay Windows, Nov. 17, '94 Grace Glueck, "Update 1984-85," The New York Times, June 21, '85 Marilu Knode, “22 Wooster ‘Rhythm and Form’,” Manhattan Arts, Vol 11, No. 2, Feb. 1, '84
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