Last month we lost a quietly powerful local artist.
For those of you who didn’t know Michelle Saffran or her work, please take some time on her website to become acquainted with her stunning altered photographs. And don’t overlook her poignant statements; they eloquently articulate her focus and intent.

Michelle ©2020 Elizabeth Fram Ink and colored pencil on paper, 14 x 11 inches Michelle was one of fourteen friend-volunteers who graciously sent me a selfie for my Covid-19 Drawing Project, soon after lockdown began.

Michelle’s photography is a haunting touchstone with place, memory, uncertainty, sometimes despair and ultimately hope — emotions that were certainly personal for her, yet are undeniably universal. She deftly found a way to illustrate both the uniqueness and the ubiquity of the human experience through moments captured on her camera and then further manipulated in her studio.

Learning of her death was a shock; I hadn’t even been aware she was sick. As I’ve revisited her website in the past couple of weeks, Hippocrates’ quote “Ars longa, vita brevis” kept coming to mind.

Michelle Saffran, Earth Danced Under A Hear Haze

Earth Danced Under A Hear Haze ©2018 Michelle Saffran, Inkjet print. Each image is made from 4 – 19″ x 13″ photographs sewn together to make one scroll measuring 19″ x 52″. This piece speaks to me about the mystery and power of nature. The juxtapositions are somewhat reminiscent of Jerry Uelsmann, yet with a voice that is clearly Michelle’s own.

However, in looking into the root of that quote it turns out not to mean, as I’d incorrectly assumed, that art lasts a long time while our lives do not. Rather, it refers to the fact that “it takes a long time to acquire and perfect one’s expertise and one has but a short time in which to do it”.

How true and ultimately sobering. It’s a clarion call to get back to work.

Winter’s Hush ©2023 Elizabeth Fram, Watercolor, graphite and stitching on paper, 5 x 5 inches. The snow gods have smiled on us again, bringing peace to the winter landscape – and comfort in a time of loss.

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I recently stumbled across the work of Lalla Essaydi, and was wowed.

Bullets #3, © Lalla Essaydi

Being something of a crow in my love for pretty objects, her glittering piece “Bullet #3” immediately caught my eye on Instagram. I was intrigued to learn that the gold is actually bullet casings, gathered from American shooting ranges and woven together with wire. The casings symbolize violence and express Essaydi’s concern about the treatment of women following the Arab Spring. Her series “Bullet” and “Bullet Revisited” are about that violence projected on women, specifically physical violence during gatherings in the squares.
But there is so much more behind her photographs: considerations of space both physical and psychological, and women within those spaces. This short introduction doesn’t do her or her work justice. Set aside some time to visit her website to see and read more. Her statement is long, but captivating.

I was saddened to read last week that Jerry Uelsmann has died.
During college, we probably spent at least 95% of our time learning about art and artists of the past, but Uelsmann was a living artist who broke through that wall of antiquity.

Jerry Uelsmann, detail ©2022 Elizabeth Fram, Watercolor and gouache on paper, 12 x 9 inches. Working on these portraits is such good practice – but so humbling. I’m learning how important it is not to rush through the drawing phase. If I lay out the drawing and then leave it to come back to later, time and space make it easier to see where adjustments are needed.

Looking back, his work definitely had a formative impact on me. While I was intrigued by the ideology of the Dada movement and iconic surrealists like Dali, I found it hard to connect with much of their work. Jerry Uelsmann was a contemporary exception; his imagery spoke to me and stayed with me. His “artful juxtapositions”, as his NY Times obituary termed them, were both approachable and curious. Looking back, I think it was Uelsmann’s photo montages that first nudged me toward grasping the importance of looking for and creating unexpected connections.

I’ve always loved this image. This old dorm room poster is tacked to my office wall, where I still enjoy it every day.

The mystical quality of his photos pulled me in, appealing to my college-age self by feeding the desire to find meaning that comes with growing into adulthood. Yet even all these years later, his images still touch on something fundamental.

Electric Milk © Elizabeth Fram, Watercolor on paper, 30 x 22 inches. This ancient painting (c. 1979) was inspired by the surrealistic objective to defy reason and Uelsmann’s example of combining disparate objects.

Intellectually, the intent behind his imagery still remains just out of reach, but one can understand enough of his visual language to feel encouraged that translation is possible — perhaps through the vocabulary of dreams. The various elements within each finished image have enough relatability to give the resulting montages an essence of personal relevance despite their mystery. Ultimately, he poses riddles that connect to something within our deeper selves.

I still refer to this wonderful monograph for inspiration and escape.

Uelsmann was a pioneer, conjuring in the 1960s what he appropriately termed “the alchemy of the darkroom”. Photoshop may have made that form of magic accessible on a more universal scale, but I’ve yet to find work that contains the same haunting aura of myth which makes Uelsmann’s work so memorable.

Elizabeth Fram

Eye of the Needle

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