Ilene Steglitz

From nature to circuit boards, I am interested in the tension between what is ordered and what is random. There is a fundamental order in the manmade industrial world and in nature, but there is also chaos. When I don’t find order I create it. Therefore the grid has always been an important part of my work. There can be beauty in the arrangement of things. But there is also beauty in the lights and shadow created by dense foliage in a wooded area with sunlight peeking between the leaves. There is beauty in accidental or arbitrary occurrences. There is beauty in chaos. When I find order I disrupt it.

These scrolls tell the story of the images that have been central to my work. They are my memories. From the infinite shades of green that filled my parents flower shop where I spent my youth, to the mounds of colorful cable that inexplicably erupted out of the sidewalks when I lived in London in the late 1980s, to the quilts I’ve watched my mother make for each of her children and grandchildren, to the grid of New York City streets, and to the abstract patterns of land viewed from a plane. These are the images that have stayed with me throughout my life and have influenced my work. They have shaped me as an artist. Collectively, they tell the story of how I process and make sense of images. How I balance the ordered and the random. This is my memoir- not written, but sketched.