by Adrienne Garnett
A sea scavenger of carved, barely tinted wood is seemingly propelled by scorched fins carved from hand-bound books. Its body is studded with mica scales and intricate details, and like Jonah’s whale, contains miniature treasure: bits of life, knowledge and experience.
Like Zen poetry, fragile weavings of silk and other ultra fine threads expand in time yet are often contained within frames. They hover in quietude as well as tension as they are pinched by burrs or other natural spines. These
are among the exquisite works of Daniel and Vicki Essig in the exhibition “Surface Tension” at the Eno Gallery in Hillsborough NC. Both artists probe secrets and essences gleaned from the earth and share them as art with dimensions of meaning. Vicki (fiber) and Daniel (sculpture) invite you to “explore and discover a world lying just beyond the surface.”
Daniel Essig’s book-based sculptures honor the ancients while slyly revealing artifice and making quantum leaps from antique to present time. Rusted and bent nails that are repurposed as mille-legs of an ancient lumbering creature host a few shiny new screws. Essig has mastered the techniques of a fourth-century book-binding style known as Ethiopian Coptic. He creates mixed-media book structures that incorporate unusual woods as covers, handmade paper, fossils, mica and found objects. This mastery appears in many of his magical birds, fish and reptiles as they clasp mini-books firmly-yet-delicately in their beaks or bear books interred in their backs or hanging symbiotically from their sides. The microcosmic detail in the work of both artists is absolutely titillating.
Vicki Essig’s weavings breathe a hushed spirituality. Most are small contained treasures, objects of meditation. There are a few long translucent hangings like narrow space dividers containing horizontal mica inserts that gleam in the light. Whether the silk is pinched and gathered by barbs, twigs or tiny vertebrae, all contain elements from nature and are deeply poetic. Vicki shares “I am fascinated with light and translucency, the contrast between the fragile and the strong. With natural materials I show the small and delicate as the powerful and significant.” Essig has recently been teaching at the Penland School of Craft, a national center for craft education located in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. Both artists live and work in Asheville, NC.
While each artist’s body of work is entirely unique, the pairing creates a fresh dynamic. The literary quality that informs both the fiber compositions (many having slivered strips of type woven through the fragile threads) and the carved and assembled sculptures (one even incorporating printer’s type) resonates from one to the other. Both artists employ the light reflective potential of mica. A sense of journeying through time and civilization permeates the gallery. These works are indeed profoundly “beyond the surface.” It comes as no surprise that Daniel Essig’s work is in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian at the Renwick Gallery in Washington, DC.

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