CARSON ELLIS // Transmundane Tuesdays

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Online exhibition debuting Friday, December 4, 2020
Transmundane Tuesdays drawing session with Carson Ellis on IGTV Tuesday, January 5, 2021 at 10am PST

These days our lives may feel as if on hold. Whether working on the front line or sheltering at home, our reality has dramatically shifted in order to accommodate the immediate, often too-tangible, demands of a global pandemic. Where we once spent each day preoccupied with the future or even mourning the past, we currently find ourselves very much in the now. The pressures of navigating this novel present have assumed paramount importance—we wake up every morning dedicated solely to the physical, mental, and financial wellbeing of ourselves and the greater community. There are still moments, of course, full of love and reconnection while we transition our time towards safer, more solitary, enterprises. The Coronavirus, however, ultimately stands as a historic test of our collective resilience. We all could use a momentary break from its grasp. It is in the service of such respite, and in recognition of both the transportive and the healing power of art, that Nationale is proud to present artist Carson Ellis’ fifth solo show with the gallery, Transmundane Tuesdays, as an online exhibition debuting on December 4, 2020.

While envisioned before the word “quarantine” became a fixture in our daily vocabulary, Transmundane Tuesdays offers a mirthful release from the varied stresses of our current collective present. The work on view culminates from an ongoing weekly project of the same name wherein, every Tuesday since October 2019, Ellis randomly selects three hand-written prompts. For example, on February 4 of this year she picked:
“Smoking a pipe.”
“Wearing a wide-brimmed hat.”
“Has a serpent’s tail.”
Ellis then incorporates these seemingly incongruous descriptors into a drawing. The final result is posted on her Instagram account alongside a photograph of the prompts in order to inspire her followers to create their own interpretations. Seen side-by-side for the first time in this virtual exhibition, Ellis’ imaginative works resemble illustrations from a collection of long-lost folk tales. Everything from frog-headed creatures to butterfly-winged knights cohabitate uncanny environs depicted using assorted media like pen, gouache, and acrylic in her trademark chimerical aesthetic. Ellis’ interest in creative prompts also links back to an art historical tradition that rings especially prescient in 2020. Like the Fluxus artist Yoko Ono’s “event scores” or Dadaist Tristan Tzara’s collage poems, Ellis’ prompts unearth a well-spring of creativity that, in turn, resituate her and her viewers away from the confines of everyday existence towards the truly fantastical.

Reinforcing this transportive potential, Ellis incorporated her “Transmundane Tuesdays” practice into “The Quarantine Art Club” this past spring on Instagram. For the first month of the shelter-in-place order, Ellis posted daily art activities designed to spur the creativity of children and adults alike who found themselves stuck at home due to the pandemic. Tuesdays were, of course, “Transmundane” while other days found participants from around the world drawing, for example, treasure maps or the faces of loved ones. Ellis encouraged these works to then be posted under the collective hashtag #quarantineartclub, where they may still be viewed in tandem with this exhibition.

Carson Ellis lives and works outside of Portland, OR. She wrote and illustrated the books for children Du Iz Tak?, winner of the 2017 Caldecott Honor, the New York Times Bestseller Home, and In The Half Room most recently. She has also illustrated such works as The Shortest Day by Susan Cooper, The Wildwood Chronicles and The Whiz Mob and the Grenadine Kid by Colin Meloy, and The Composer is Dead by Lemony Snicket. She is a two-time recipient of the Silver Medal awarded by the Society of Illustrators. Throughout the past decade and a half, she has exhibited original artwork in Portland, OR, at Nationale, PDX Contemporary Art, Basil Hallward Gallery, and Motel.
Ellis is represented by Nationale in Portland, OR, and by R. Michelson Galleries in Northampton, MA.

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