La Voz

Media Credit: Andrea Svendsen

Media Credit: Andrea Svendsen

Media Credit: Andrea Svendsen

Lifelong artist Eileen Estes explores the ideal of perfection through art. Estes is the winner of the 2007 student exhibition sculpture award at the Euphrat Museum of Art.

Estes created art most of her life, getting advice and encouragement from her mother who was also an artist. But Estes did not receive any formal training until she reached college, taking several studio art classes while earning a degree in biology from Strathmore College in Pennsylvania.

Estes said art was just something she was good at and liked doing. "But it wasn't going to feed me, so it wasn't something I did when I graduated from college," she said. Instead, she went to work doing research in a lab. After returning to California, Estes decided to once again pursue art. She enrolled at De Anza College taking painting and sculpting classes, in part due to the structure they would provide.

"It's extremely hard to provide yourself the structure," said Estes. "And so that's probably my biggest weakness, the inability to produce in a vacuum, which is hard for anyone." Much of Estes' work tends toward the theme of society's rejection of imperfections.

"Little Ghosts," one of Estes' submissions to the Euphrat, is a lightbox of ghostly babies abandoned under a black tree. It is a world so caught up in perfection that children are rejected, thrown out simply because they don't fit into the mold society desires.

"But that's kind of a sad thing to do a painting about," Estes said with a laugh. "A lot of my pieces are, you know, kind of depressing." Estes was inspired to experiment with suspended sculpture after seeing the work of Cornelia Parker at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco.

Parker's work, "Anti-Mass," was made of suspended chunks of the burnt wooden remains of a black church which fell victim to arson. "I was amazed," Estes said.

For Estes, this form of sculpture was an opportunity to attempt a more positive piece. "Whole" is comprised of fishing weights attached to approximately 500 strings in the form of a circle, suspended from a metal frame.

"I call it 'Whole' because we all have things where we think, if we only change this about ourselves, we'll be whole, we'll be complete," Estes said of her award winning sculpture. "It sort of represents that ideal, whatever it may be for anyone."

Estes worked an average of six hours a week for six months to complete the project. One of the greatest obstacles to completing the piece was how easily the strings could become tangled.

"I would come [to the studio] and there would be all kinds of tangles in it," she said. "So instead of actually working on it, I had to just sit there and untangle."

Moving the sculpture from the studio to the Euphrat was a difficult process. Two people carried the sculpture on a wood frame specifically designed for the task, while several other people stayed close by in case there were any complications. They also clipped as many of the strings together as possible to prevent tangling.

Despite all the preventive measures, Estes still spent over five hours untangling the piece in order to finish the installation. But she was pleased with the final piece.

"It was just a miracle that we even got it and got it hung up," said Estes.

Moto Ohtaki, sculpture instructor at De Anza, was very pleased with the outcome of the piece.

"The slightest current would jingle it," said Ohtaki. "If you stay there, and stare at each individual piece, the movement of each piece, to me, it's hypnotizing."

Currently, Estes doesn't have any big projects planned, due in part to her recent pregnancy.

"I definitely have this grand idea that I was going to be an artist, and I might still be," Estes said. "But I mean when you have a baby coming along it kind of changes things a little bit."

"I think it's up to me not to kind of say, okay, what direction do I want to go in," Estes said.

"I'm not done with art, I'm really not."

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