Evelyn Rydz

Gallery Affiliations: Ellen Miller Gallery

Region: Northeast

I have always been drawn to the vastness and unpredictability of the sea and the objects it carries. A lost sneaker floating in the tide, a sun-bleached plastic bottle resting on a rocky shoreline, or a pallet submerged deep below the ocean’s surface each suggest leftovers from past events that have made them castaways in foreign landscapes. I am interested in stories of relocation and transformation that are embedded within these objects.

The root of my work is in exploring the details and core elements which make something, and which contain endless information about its past. Working from both observation and imagination, my drawings are based on possibilities of new environments and ideas of how future landscapes will evolve. Created from fragments of multiple places that I reorganize into new landscapes, they often exist as unexplored or forgotten islands drifting out at sea. These islands are comprised of disparate objects that have been lost, discarded, or defeated by momentous change. Underlying all these landscapes is the inevitability, threat, and potential of change.