“I think it is all a matter of love: The more you love a memory, the stronger and stranger it is.” Vladimir Nabokov
COUNT THE HOURS, 2017, at Barry Whistler Gallery, Dallas featured my abstract quillwork paintings on paper. My intention is to explore the poetry of color, the marking of time (especially in the literal shift that occurs as you view the pieces from the side and then full frontally). I spin geometric modernism into a painted form that is assemblage, textiles, and drawing. It is something different; something delicate and fragile, and most of all, beautiful.
R+R: reveries and responses, was my domestic installation at koelsch haus, Houston, in September 2018.These narrative paintings are a counterpoint to mass production with luscious patterning and surface embellishments, immediately throwing them into a conversation about the decorative, beauty, high-low art, women’s handwork, femininity and male potency. I explore thematic conceits and plays-on-words. Many pieces are intentionally sentimental, telling universal stories with paint, sewing, and much ornament. Recycle and reuse, indeed.
Ephemera and souvenirs weave associative paths between past and present. An idealized past battles pop culture. Beneath the pretty veneer and couture beading lays some hard truths.
Ellen Frances Tuchman is a Southern California native, a child of Disney and Technicolor, living in Dallas for the past 35 years. She has exhibited widely since graduating as a textile major from California College of the Arts (CCAC)in 1976. That essence is a thru line in all her work — from the heavily beaded ephemera she layers into narratives to her exuberant, abstract paper quill paintings that clearly were influenced by the LA light and space movement she grew up with. Fetish finish and a wonderment, even an innocence, resides in her obsessively detailed paintings. Pigments of beads, sequins, nail polish, acrylic, colored pencils, eye shadow, or thread cavort — contradicting traditional expectations about fine art materials and crafting. Women’s needlework is elevated to high art with her contemporary takes on the unrelenting stimuli in modern life.
Tuchman’s work is unique, a precursor to current surface, textile, and materialism trends seen in painting. She is a featured artist in Texas Artists Now, by Catherine Anspon. Public collections include the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Lancaster Hotel, Houston, the Federal Reserve Branch in Houston, the Harris County Courthouse, Pasadena, TX and the Harold Simmons Foundation, Dallas. Her work is frequently seen in Houston, where she’s been represented by koelsch haus gallery since 2003. Her most recent solo exhibit, R+R: REVERIES AND RESPONSES, was there in 2018. COUNT THE HOURS, at Barry Whistler Gallery, Dallas was in 2017.
RECENT SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2021 Make Way for Tomorrow, koelsch gallery, Houston, TX
2019 The B-Side redux, Cliff Gallery, Mountain View College, Dallas, TX (catalogue)
2018 R+R: reveries and responses, koelsch haus gallery, Houston, TX (catalogue)
2017 Count the Hours, Barry Whistler Gallery, Dallas, TX (catalogue)
2012 The B-Side, koelsch gallery, Houston, TX (catalogue)
Houston Art Fair, FOCUS booth with koelsch gallery, Houston, TX
2009 Out of My Mind, PanAmerican ArtProjects, Dallas, TX (catalogue)
Travelogue,koelsch gallery, Houston, TX (catalogue)
2007 Flights of Fancy, PanAmerican ArtProjects, Miami, FL
2006 George Billis Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2005 Chapel Chromatica, Lawndale Art Center, Houston, TX (brochure)
RECENT SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2021 The Art of Paper, Pearl Fincher Museum of Fine Art, Spring, TX
2018 ears of buddha: mystical power, koelsch haus gallery, Houston, TX
2013 Idle Hands, Turner Carroll Gallery, Santa Fe, NM
Collage: Now, Then & Again, Barry Whistler Gallery, Dallas, TX
2011 Obsessive Worlds, The Art Museum of Southeast Texas, Beaumont, TX;
traveled to Alexandria Art Museum, Alexandria, LA (catalogue)
2007 Bookworks, Galveston Art Center, Galveston, TX
2006 Biennial Southwest, The Albuquerque Museum, Albuquerque, NM
Assistance League of Houston CELEBRATES TEXAS ART 2006, Houston, TX
2005 Layered, Stacked, Assembled, Arlington Museum of Art, Arlington, TX
Galerie Sho, Tokyo, Japan
2003 Mark Making: A Drawing Show, Arlington Museum of Art, Arlington, TX
2001 CraftHouston 2002: Texas, The Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, Houston, TX
(catalogue; traveled to the Buddy Holly Center, Lubbock, South Texas Institute for the
Arts, Corpus Christi and the Galveston Art Center)
2000 Joyce Scott & Friends Revisited: Pushing the Boundaries of Beadwork, Mobilia Gallery,
Cambridge, MA
Material World, Marta Hewett Gallery, Cincinnati, OH
Beadwork in America, Haydon Gallery, Lincoln, NE (traveled to Hastings College;
catalogue)
PUBLIC ART COMMISSIONS
2010 ON A WAVE and HOT SPOT, DLA Piper, LLC, Houston, TX
2010 HONOR OUR PAST; BUILD OUR FUTURE, John P. Harris Courthouse, Pasadena, TX
2008 CIELOMARE and TERRABELLA, Greenberg Traurig, Houston, TX
2007 STONELEIGH HOTEL HISTORY and ELVIS at the SH, Stoneleigh Hotel, Dallas, TX
2007 BRIDGEWAY AT 15 YEARS, Bridgeway Capital Management, Houston, TX
2006 THE HOGLUNDS, Hoglund Foundation, Dallas, TX
2005 HOUSTON, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas - Houston Branch, Houston, TX
AWARDS AND HONORS
2008 finalist, Hunting Art Prize, Houston, TX
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
2019 Sarradet, William. Ellen Frances Tuchman
2019 Mora, Patricia. "The B-Side-Learning to Bear Witness”
2018 Israel, Nancy Cohen. “Hope for the Future, Embellished with the Past: Ellen Frances
Tuchman’s Reveries”
2011 Obsessive Worlds, Art Museum of Southeast Texas, Beaumont, TX
2010 Texas Artists Today, Anspon, Catherine D., Marquand Books, Inc., p.241-244
2007 Willhour, Clint. Up Close and Personal, catalogue essay, PanAmerican ArtProjects
SELECTED PUBLIC AND CORPORATE COLLECTIONS
Cockerell Dermapathology Lab, Dallas, TX
Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas - Houston Branch, Houston, TX
Godwin-Ternbach Museum, City University of New York, Queens College, NY
Harold Simmons Foundation, Dallas, TX
Hoglund Foundation, Dallas, TX
Metropolitan Museum of Art, Costume Institute, NY
RBC Dain Rauscher, Inc, Dallas, TX
Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry, Miami Beach, FL
The Lancaster Hotel, Houston, TX
SELECTED PRIVATE COLLECTIONS
Beverly and Bart Bentley, Houston, TX
Alexandra Bowes, San Francisco, CA
Phyllis and Sidney Bresler, Bethesda, MD
Gracie Cavnar, Houston, TX
Serena and Tom Connelly, Dallas, TX
Carolyn Grant Fay estate, Houston, TX
Keith Forman and Mary Morton, Houston, TX
Cecily Horton, Houston, TX
Josie and Michael Jones, Houston, TX
Nanette Laitman, New York, NY
Victoria and Marshal Lightman, Houston, TX
Ruthie and Jay Pack, Carmel, CA
Allen and Kelli Questrom, Aspen, CO
EDUCATION
BFA, 1976, California College of the Arts (formerly CCAC), Oakland, CA; major in textiles
CONTACT
eftstudio1@gmail.com — http://www.ellenfrancestuchman.com
Represented by: koelsch haus gallery ∙ 1020 Peden Street, Houston
713-862-5744
Works available: BARRY WHISTLER GALLERY ∙ 315 Cole Street, Dallas
214-939-0242