ELIE PORTER TRUBERT
"Four Seasons"
Outdoor Residency 2022-2024

ARTIST STATEMENT

Parenting and career rendered my creative practice nearly non-existent for decades until a crisis inspired a new body of work exploring intergenerational trauma. That work became the centerpiece of “Nature/Nurture,” an exhibition I curated of six generations of artists in my family. While previously hand-painted photography was my medium, this new work was primarily sculptural, made of natural materials found on walks and inspired by nature where I take refuge from the world and am alone with thoughts that directly inform the work. 

From that point forward I prioritized my practice and carved out more time for it. I have been actively exhibiting over the past three years and in 2020 my first solo exhibition, “The Great Beyond,” took place. This was an audiovisual installation exploring what happens when we die, inspired by the death of my own father. Last year, “Wishful” took place. The title referenced my wishful or magical thinking represented by work created during the pandemic. A series of talismans and magic wands were inspired by my first visit to The Met when it reopened after a prolonged COVID closure, and my desire for things to be other than they were. In the center of the gallery I created a large circular installation or Mandala comprised of bark, sand, stones, and other objects collected on my wanderings. For the past year I have been drawn to the circle as form and process. This spring I will show my cyanotypes in a solo exhibition and am a participating artist in Twenty 20 UK/US, a collaboration between ten US and ten UK artists that will be exhibited in both New Jersey and London.

Driven by a deep connection to nature, interest in ecology, the environment, and non-traditional and non-exclusionary ways to present and experience art, I have started creating site specific work in public parks using materials found on site. This work is accessible to anyone who visits the park, anonymous, cannot be commodified, and is not obviously “art.” A year at Whittemore will allow me to go much deeper into this type of work. 

P R O F E S S I O N A L  A C H I E V E M E N T S

2020 “Learning to Applied Practice: Anti-Racism and Anti-Oppression” intensive 5-month program 

2019 Somerset County Tourism Economic Champion Award

2017 Somerset County Cultural & Heritage Commission Somerset County Excellence in the Arts Award for Arts in Community

2015 New Jersey Governor's Award in Art Education

2014 Art Educators of New Jersey John J. Pappas Recognition Award in recognition of “outstanding leadership, dedication and service to art education in New Jersey.”

O T H E R

• Trustee Charles Emil Thenen Foundation

• Member Cultural Access Network Arts and Autism Committee

• Member Somerset County Business Partnership Non-Profit Council

• Member ArtTable Professional Women in the Visual Arts

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R E S I D E N C I E S

Whittemore Nature Preserve, New Jersey, 2022-2023

Chateau Orqueveaux, France, 2022 

Trillium Arts, Mars Hill, North Carolina, 2021 artist