It Falls Apart exhibit premiere thru April 28, 2017

Elise Nyenhuis is premiering It Falls Apart at the Inver Hills Art Gallery now through April 28, 2017. To learn more about Elise and her work, please read her biography below or visit her website: EliseJoyNyenhuis.com.

It Falls Apart

A premiere exhibition by

Elise Nyenhuis

Now through Friday, April 28, 2017

Closing reception:
Thursday, April 27, 2017, at 7 p.m.

Inver Hills Art Gallery

Fine Arts Building
Inver Hills Community College
2500 80th Street East
Inver Grove Heights, MN 55076
General: 651-450-3000
Gallery: 651-450-3101

Artist Biography

Elise Nyenhuis’ work resurrects the discarded remains of the natural world. Her materials begin as fragile and decaying: honeycomb diseased by pesticides, oak bark dead from a flood, burnt wood from a house fire, bones left from a hunt. Working in a variety of visual media and performance, the rebirth is realized through ritual.

Elise states about her work, “We are constantly surrounded by the architecture of loss—lost social structure, lost safety, lost natural landscape, lost homes, etc. In the cycles of destruction and regeneration present in nature, we find hope that our crumbling world will also one day be made stronger and better than before. Organic structures are constantly rebuilding themselves, allowing the process of tearing down to dwell within building up. Man-made materials recall the ghosts of the organic. The fragility and strength of our present condition is intuitively communicated as the artwork dwells between destruction and creation.”

Elise currently resides in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She is an art advisor at Northwest Passage High School, where she teaches classes in Sculpture, Painting, Performance Art, Drawing, Environmental Humanities, Fire Arts, and Fabrication Lab. She is actively designing and teaching Art curriculum with a STEAM focus, integrating her interests in ecology and science into her coursework.

— Courtesy of EliseJoyNyenhuis.com

Artist statement: It Falls Apart

Loss implies an absence, but something is always left behind. When it falls apart, there is a period of sifting through the rubble. Decay is quickly shuffled away into a separate corner; it’s a closet we don’t want to open. I am confronted by my visceral reactions to darkness, a dead animal, an object reminding me of someone I’ve lost.

The interior rooms of grief are fragile and tangible, leaving some experiences reflected only by nature. These natural materials were found on long walks through the woods, swamps, farms, and rivers between Minnesota and Standing Rock. In altars of sticks and bones, decay exposes hidden and vulnerable spaces which bear potential for transfiguration.​

For more information about Elise Nyenhuis and the Inver Hills Art Gallery, contact:

Joel Starkey
Gallery Curator and Coordinator
651-450-3101

Sculptor Elise Nyenhuis shared her art with visitors of the Minnesota Children’s Museum this June as part of the museum’s Summer Artist Series.