WILLIAM SARRADET

When we think of the creation of visual culture in the US, we often look west. California is responsible for much of the star-making, the personality that the world enjoys in film, tv, and sometimes is mistaken as the identity of the West as a whole. But creation is not enough. Texas’ role in the US has always been one as hub for distribution. It is a logistics powerhouse in commercial printing, shipping, broadcast technologies, and the energy sector. In the sewn esoterica of Ellen Frances Tuchman, we come to realize, that media often has two sides. Art

has the power to illustrate the tension between dualities, and Tuchman uses the post-production item as a sieve through which to consider what is prime and what is unseen.

PATRICIA MORA

Tuchman’s work has often been described as pretty — and while it is colorful and deliciously, even performatively, complex — that particular adjective inflicts an unintended indignity of the sort denoted by the word mignon in French. While such pronouncements were meant as praise, they fail to encompass her arts’ true agency. Tuchman’s aesthetics of outré pop motifs coupled with the dicey sides of feminine pulchritude call to mind the ways in which imagery, texture, and juxtaposition can operate and lead us to explore the frantic — and unnerving — manner in which art imitates life. Her work is searingly personal and a kind of reverie in the Romantic tradition. By that I mean she is sifting through the psychological scree of a lifetime and giving it new form that functions as a kind of magic lantern of memory, loss, and melancholia.

NANCY COHEN ISRAEL

Tuchman further emphasizes the dichotomy between what is perceived as women’s craft, which is often unappreciated, and the architectural vision traditionally associated with men, which as seen here, is universally rewarded. Working in series is a constant in Tuchman’s practice. The immersive installation 70 MILES NORTH OF SOMEWHERE: mr. softee/the tower project (a continuing gseries of 175+ units) features small format paintings, installed salon style. Meant to evoke a gentleman’s smoking room, its furnishings imbue the room with masculinity. The space is enhanced by digitally composed wallpaper of Tuchman’s own design. Postcards of towers, cacti and waterfalls serve as the central image in all of these works, with its intentionally implied sexual symbolism.”