Michelle Marcuse

Self-determination, reclamation, rediscovery, and imagination fuel my artistic drive. I channel these energies into the creation of mixed media sculptures as well as relief drawings, assemblages, and prints. Childhood memories, the transience of life, and the beauties of the natural world inform my practice in conceptual and material ways, guiding my hand and mind as I give form to the work.

 

As a child growing up in Cape Town, South Africa, I spent a lot of time playing outdoors with my brother. Together we’d concoct fanciful tales in our beloved garden setting, constructing elaborate make-believe worlds from the overgrown natural environment all around us. This sensibility for the specificity of place and the escapist joys of storytelling never left me. Whether I’m sourcing materials, sculpting objects out of various media, drawing, collaging, or making prints, I’m always working with a narrative focus as a personal reevaluation of heritage, self, and place.

 

My material choices and considered processes are inspired as much by those childhood experiences as by my more mature processing of the realities of society, especially those I confronted while growing up under the apartheid era. I craft sculptures to express ideas about beauty and complexity alike, yielding abstract objects that present as curiously harmonious while conveying a sense of structural strife. In this pursuit, my materials of choice include diverse implements such as wire, raffia, string, cardboard, foil, and various types of metal, all selected for their repurposable nature and structural malleability. For nuance and aesthetic variance, I also incorporate elements like gouache, acrylic paint, graphite chalks, and glitter. My approach is one of intuition and trial and error, and my process unfolds with a sense of deliberate yet restless inquiry, leaving space for rhythmic interplay between areas of delineation and negative space. In my sculptures and wall hangings, my narrative settings are navigable objects. In my two-dimensional works, they’re contained in picture planes.

 

I create artwork as an exploration of beauty, cultural amalgamation, and the endurance of traditions, emphasizing both material craftsmanship and the refinement of my methodology. My sculptures and other mixed media artworks are records of experiences and reflections of the natural world – a multisensory diary filled with feelings, memories, illusions, and aspects of place. Like a child staging fairy tales in a garden, I bring disparate elements into cohesive, imaginative wholes, inviting others into spaces of dialogue and narrative exchange. 

 

Michelle has taught at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Moore College of Art, Main Line Art Center, Howard Pyle Studios and many other organizations. She has exhibited widely throughout the country and her work is in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, College of Notre Dame of Maryland, The State Museum of PA, Coventry First, the Bangkok Collection, Cultural Fiber, US Embassy, Thailand and more. She has served on the Art Advisory committees for Taller Puertorriqueno and the Art in City Hall program, both in Philadelphia.

 

She attended the Shenkar College of Fashion and Textile Technology in Tel Aviv, Israel, the Michaelis School of Art, University of Cape Town, South Africa, and received her BFA from Tyler School of Art, Temple University.

 

More information can be found at: www.michellemarcuse.com