October 2024 Vol. 5, No.2
The Primal Botanical Wood Sculptures of Loren Eiferman
“The plant must be valued as a totally artistic and architectural structure.”
—Karl Blossfeldt
2022
217 pieces of wood, acrylic paint and linseed oil
43” x 26” x 3.5”
Naturalists perceive that you cannot exceed the beauty and power of natural structures. In 1928, the German photographer, sculptor and design teacher Karl Blossfeldt[1] published his seminal book Urformen der Kunst (The Primal Forms of Art), pioneering macrophotography of plants. Nature macrophotography gives the imagination access to incredible details, bringing an entirely new dimensional world to the human eye. Extreme close-ups allow us to see the hidden world of plants and to present a perspective in such a new way so that their bold structural and rhythmic forms are emphasized so that plants take on new and exotic characteristics. Professor Blossfeldt used his plant photographs to demonstrate to students that the best engineering solutions for industrial design had already been anticipated in nature.[2] As a visionary arts educator, he partly intended for his botanical macro-photos to be an inspiration for architects, designers and sculptors.
The wood sculptor Loren Eiferman, in the Hudson Valley of New York, uniquely elevated this concept, having invented and perfected a brilliant, totally new form of wood sculpturing. Nobody currently works in wood the way Eiferman does. Beyond total one-of-a-kind originality, her earthy wood sculptures are stunning natural forms, at once fine art and a natural structure – a place where fantasy straddles reality, where dimensions shift. Wood, the natural material used by mankind since the beginning to time, offers a feeling of warmth and comfort, while Eiferman’s ingenious forms convey a direct connection to nature. She essentially uses line art with one organic material to recreate otherwordly plant forms, reshaping the linear sticks and branches to create new forms. The wooden sticks carry the fundamental line, the primary design element of her three-dimensional form. Blossfeldt inspired her to transform his two-dimensional Urformen into three dimensional forms by shaping wooden sticks into the ultimate type of naturalistic organic art – intrinsically beautiful botanical sculptures. She took this into yet another direction, influenced by the mysterious, much-speculated-upon, centuries-old puzzle, the infamous Voynich Manuscript[3]. It was discovered in 1912 by the Czech rare books dealer Wilfrid Voynich, and the book ended up in the Beinecke Library at Yale. The book’s language has thus far eluded decipherment.
“My work taps into that same primal desire of touching nature and being close to it. Trees connect us back to nature, back to this Earth.”
Loren Eiferman is a successful professional artist who was born in Brooklyn, New York. She stated, “My work taps into that same primal desire of touching nature and being close to it. Trees connect us back to nature, back to this Earth.” She studied drawing in France with the famed painter Erik Koch, who was Hans Hofmann’s assistant when he ran the Hans Hofmann School of Fine Arts in Greenwich Village, New York City. “We drew from a model in charcoal on the same size piece of paper every day for a year. It was nothing else: life drawing every day. We’d go in the morning, break for lunch, come back to the studio work and then have dinner, and then go back to the studio and work some more at night. It was a very intensive experience. I think that taught me the power of showing up every day to make artwork and have the discipline to be able to express myself and have the work communicate. It was an incredible program.” She later graduated from the State University of New York in Purchase with a bachelor’s in fine arts. Eiferman has exhibited extensively in top tier galleries, museums and spaces throughout the Tri-State New York-Connecticut-New Jersey region.
2015-2024
155 pieces of wood with brass metal coating
78” x 36” x 24”
2024
78 pieces of wood, panty hose, paper clay, brass metal coating
50” x 15” x 7”
The artist explained, “I use the wood, the sticks, as my material, but my inspiration comes from many different sources. One of my big sources these days, and has always been, is looking at the nature that surrounds me: how a leaf is attached to a tree, how a flower opens, and to look at the pistils and the stamens and the roots. Nature always inspires me. For the past 10-years I’ve been inspired by the Voynich Manuscript written in an unknown language in the early 15th century by an unknown author. The book is filled with illustrations of plants that don’t exist in nature – and it’s totally out there. It’s a remarkable manuscript. Whenever I look at this book, it always gives me ideas to turn the fantastical illustrations from this manuscript into sculptures. I’ve been working on this series for almost a decade now. There are other sources of inspiration over the years, like the images beamed back from the Hubble Telescope. I did a whole series on celestial work. The black-and-white photographer from the turn of the century, Karl Blossfeldt – and his photographs of plant life in extreme close-up has always captivated me. I frequently look at plants to get in close and dissect them visually. Once I start working in the studio, my work ends up feeding itself. For instance, now I’m working on a Karl Blossfeldt-inspired plant, but the root systems are inspired by the wacky root systems that I see in plants, and the Voynich Manuscript. All these inspirations feed off one another.”
2019
62 pieces of wood, pastel, linseed oil and graphite
27” x 14” x 4”
2018
287 pieces of wood, linseed oil and powdered graphite
46” x 56” x 5”
She articulated her process, “Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve always picked up sticks and peeled the bark off with my fingernails. The bark gets stuck in your fingernails, and it exposes the smooth wood underneath. Whenever I took walks in the woods, I’d always pick up a stick to use as a walking cane. It’s something that surrounds all of us, and why not take nature’s detritus, nature’s castoffs – it’s there for the taking to make art out of it. Otherwise, it will just go back into the earth and get recycled. I recycle nature’s shedding and turn it into art. It’s what surrounds me. It’s what I see every day. It enchants me. I only pick up branches that have fallen for the most part – unless we must take down a tree for some reason. I end up keeping the sticks in my studio for quite a while to make sure it’s all dried out and it’s not going to crack and there are no bugs in it. But for the most part I’d say 95 percent of my work comes from sticks that I collect on my walks every morning.”
2022
118 pieces of wood, silver metal coating with linseed oil and pastel
33” x 32” x 17”
“I have this giant sea of sticks in my studio. I usually do a sketch first before I begin to start working in wood. The sketch acts like a roadmap of where I want the sculpture to go, just to get my ideas on paper. These are drawings that are flat which I then translate into three dimensions. Then I start looking for shapes found within each stick. If I need a curve, I’ll look for a stick that has that certain kind of curve in it. I’ll cut small pieces of wood together to match that curve. Sometimes I do a large drawing on the floor and lay the wood on top to get the exact shape I want. Frequently, I just cut many small pieces of wood together, and join them with dowels and wood glue. When there are joints exposed, I make putty and cover all the joints; wait for the putty to dry, sand it, reapply the putty, wait for it to dry, and sand it. I often need to apply this putty three or four times so the wood all looks seamless. Each sculpture takes me a minimum of a month. It’s a very time-consuming process. Each sculpture is built from over a hundred small pieces of wood that have been joined together.”
2023
106 pieces of wood, paper clay, matte medium, bronze metal coating with green patina,
32” x 28” x 4”
2004
150 pieces of wood turned into bronze
57” x 34” x 36”
Her art is as fulfilling as it is unique, “I’m never bored. I go to bed at night thinking about my work. I might wake up in the middle of the night dreaming about it. I come to my studio every day and work. It all feeds into my life. It’s a cycle of work. I respect the earth, and I respect the natural order of things. There is art surrounding us everyday if we open our eyes to see it.”
2017
47 pieces of wood with and oil paint
46” x 30” x 3”
2022
150 pieces of wood with linseed oil and pastel
62” x 31” x 5”
2022
154 pieces of wood paperclay, graphite, pastel, acrylic paint, linseed oil
60” x 12” x 4”
Eiferman’s work has been met with critical acclaim in the art world and adorns the homes of famous patrons including singer/songwriter Paul Simon and with his wife singer/songwriter Eddie Brickell; and Lars Ulrich and Jessica Miller, the drummer of Metallica and his wife the fashion model, who owns four of her sculptures. “I want people to look at my work and have a sense of wonder about the world we live in. For my work to make other people happy like that and transmit some sort of energy and make people think about the world which surrounds us is wonderful. So that to me is success.”
2020
wood, pastel, linseed oil, iron metal coating with rust patina
25” x 26” x 4”
2017
94 pieces of wood
48” x 22” x 18”
2017
77 pieces of wood, acrylic paint and stain
52” x 31” x 6”
“I love being here on this planet. I love discovering. I love creating. I am never bored.”
That is success, indeed.
[1] https://www.moma.org/artists/24413
[2] https://file-magazine.com/features/karl-blossfeldt
[3] https://beinecke.library.yale.edu/collections/highlights/voynich-manuscript
Frank Matheis, Writer
Frank Matheis is a music, arts and culture writer and a contributing writer to the Inspiration Art Group International. His latest project was the book ‘Sweet Bitter Blues’ co-written with National Heritage Fellow Phil Wiggins (University Press of Mississippi, 2020). His column ‘In Other Words’ features member artists in all disciplines and general arts essays. He is also a contributing writer to Living Blues magazine (Center for Southern Culture Studies) and the publisher/editor of thecountryblues.com. Frank was formerly an award-winning radio and music producer whose radio documentaries were heard on three continents in two languages. He is also a published photographer, curator and video producer.