CHEMISTRY IS THE EMOTION OF MATTER  2007

Ambiguous, perhaps ominous organisms float and hover on the page in transition, mutation, and transformation – portrayed in the sentient rigors of corrosion, decay, and metamorphosis. 

These drawings are made with an electrically-charged stylus on a copper table. The burnt holes in paper combine to make line and volume; flame from a torch or material burned directly on the drawings adds color and shading. The drawing technique adds to the tension between beauty and pollution, delicacy and destruction.

Hothouses of the imagination at SOIL Seattle Times, Gail Louise Clemans

"Ellen Ziegler stands out... with several drawings formed of dark pixels made by burning tiny holes in a page. The accumulation of these dots of information produces a sort of sepia image, and therefore an aesthetic air of antiquity, out of keeping with the mutant-looking creatures she describes."
     Kenneth Baker, San Francisco Chronicle, May 5, 2007
     Drawings of Another Kind, LIMN Gallery, San Francisco