Washingtonart interviewed Ellyn Weiss in September 2001, during the first week of her show at the Glenview Mansion in Rockville. To learn more about her working process and the pieces displayed at the Glenview Mansion, read on!

washingtonart: Ellyn, you've been working on this new series for about one year; the palette and sizes of the pieces are quite different from your previous work--why the change?

Ellyn Weiss: Yes, this work is bigger and more lurid (as a fellow artist remarked) The change started with the dimensions. About a year ago,I had a desire to get bigger and serendipitously discovered a source of supply for very large, robust and reasonably priced paper, so it seemed ordained from above! In that mysterious way things sometimes happen, working bigger triggered the move to richer, brighter colors. The size created an added sense of freedom that allowed me to try more difficult colors.

washingtonart: so there was an opportunity for bigger and bolder, but how about motive--has anything you've seen influenced this change, or hove you just been growing more confident in your work over the last few years?

Ellyn Weiss: I think I have become both more familiar with and more adventurous with my materials. I also firmly believe that making work just inspires making more work. As I spend consistently more time in my studio, with more work resulting, I feel more inclined to risk new things. Not every piece has to be wonderful - I can throw things away without anxiety. Perhaps that is part of the reason why I feel that my current work reflects more freedom (even a bit of abandon?)

washingtonart: Let's talk about your working process. Do you create these pieces sequentially, or do you work on several at a time?

Ellyn Weiss: I always work on 5 or 6 pieces at once. I'll tape 6 big pieces of paper on my studio walls and start with 6 clean surfaces. Then I begin working on all of them. The first several layers of my current work are primarily oil pastel, with overlapping colors and shapes and lots of scratching and scraping back between layers. then I start laying on the soft pastel and dry pigments, often along with oilbar, a wonderful juicy material. It may take a month or more to finish those, then I start again.

washingtonart: you have some intriguing titles for your pieces, like "Vehement Denial" or "Peaceful Coexistence"; do they come from what's on your mind as you start the work, or do you name the pieces afterwards?

Ellyn Weiss: You have noticed, I'm sure, that there is a lot of writing on my pieces, albeit obscured and unreadable in the end product. The words usually come first, or at least early in the process, and are augmented as I go on. They reflect what I'm thinking about at the moment I start and at later moments. There is often a connection between those words and the title. Having said that, I should confess that sometimes the titles just come out of the blue after the work is done.

washingtonart: What guides you as you bring your works to completion--esthetics or content?

Ellyn Weiss: I am guided by an intuitive aesthetic. Each mark and color responds to the previous ones. Knowing when a piece is finished is always difficult; I think edges and endings are perhaps the biggest challenges to abstract artists. I live with a potentially finished piece for a few weeks at least until I decide that there is nothing more that I can do to improve it. Most times I have a finished piece, but sometimes a discard.

washingtonart: This is a major body of work you are showing at Glenview mansion; is there any one piece that stands out for you?

Ellyn Weiss: It changes over time. Right now I'm most attracted to the more explosive pieces, like Mindless Extravagance, Heated Discussion and Vehement Denial.

washingtonart: One final question about your show, Ellyn: what are you hoping for from the experience of exhibiting at Glenview Mansion?

Ellyn Weiss: No extravagant expectations - I actually think that most of the benefit of the show has already occurred, in that it pushed me to make a body of work that feels different from what went before and coherent in itself. Now there's the big quesiton of what comes next. I have some ideas, but we'll see...

Gallery shots of the Glenview Mansion show