Nurit Pazner:
Bio
Based in Chicago, Illinois, Nurit Pazner is a multidisciplinary artist who works between painting and sculpture. She makes low-relief collage and found-object sculpture – wall art ranging in size from refrigerator size to monitor size, to tabletop objects, the size of a cocktail napkin.
She has been sourcing cardstock and plastic from boxes of frozen pizza, body lotion and other consumer packaged goods and combining them with acrylics, wood, and aluminum composite panels. Her visual references are grounded in the outdoor scenery around Chicago: landmarks, neighborhoods, and spring in the Midwest.
Pazner earned her BSc in computer science and MS in management, and later continued her education in painting and art history at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC).
Statement
I am interested in waste with respect to consumerism and material by-products. I consider the relationship between waste and the value of labor with an intention is to explore two themes:
One is the idea that the process of making is a defining characteristic of the object, equal in importance to its texture, color and shape. The second theme is that desirability is the factor that keeps objects from going to waste. The history of the object – how it came to be – makes it more desirable. This is where I find that materials and labor converge.
I focus on aspects of breakage and repair and aspire to treat these facts with optimism as if they were coveted pieces of jewelry.
In my process I utilize a variety of tools including paint brushes, precision scissors, a rotary carving tool, photo editing software, and a vinyl cutter – drawing from my training in art and computer science.
I photobash a digital composition from photos I take of architectural details and landscapes, then use software drawing tools to sketch my subjects by hand. My final sketch includes marks for warm and cool colors and segmentation by color values. I design a layered composition and indicate which parts are visible on each layer. The design informs the scrap materials I select to find a good fit for the picture. I then build up the form on top of a wood or aluminum panel.