It’s 2 pm on a Thursday, I’m sitting at a slightly wobbly, slightly too small table at an artisanal coffee shop of Elizabeth’s choice. She’s been at the studio since 6 am, and this is her coffee break in-between projects. I turn around to see her skipping towards my table. She’s probably wearing a knee-length dress with an oversized collar, funky shoes, and a small tote bag. Her microbangs are framed by long layers of meticulously styled mousy brown hair, and she’s probably carrying a bible, a journal, photo transparencies, a pair of scissors, coffee and string in her hands.
As we talk, Elizabeth chats with perfect posture, continuing the project with scissors, negatives, and string. The steady urgency to continue her work on her coffee break is frankly inspiring. As we sip our drinks she talks about her week, wood pieces her partner Ruben has been working on, her feelings about an upcoming show, and something she’s trying to grow in spiritually. Spirituality is naturally interwoven in all our conversations. She mentions aspirations towards humility or her aim to relinquish personal desires just as flippantly as I might mention my dog’s new trick of the week, or my current favorite tv show. Just as her studio work ebbs and flows through her coffee breaks, so does her deep, spiritual introspection, as it manifests in commonplace social interactions. This disruptive kind of sincere honesty about her spirituality is what cuts through the instant-gratification, meme-like illustrations in the captions of her tile works.
“deny yourself” is comprised of murals and drawings, merging digitally-stylized images with personal quotes onto clean-cut, white suburban tiles. The captions are quickly digestible, donning phrases like, “You are in pain, in part due to your relentless pursuit of desire.” They’re both didactic and personal. They feel simultaneously like an entry from Elizabeth’s personal diary and a quote from the Bible. They’re instantly digestible like a meme, while providing shocking transparency into her pursuits against desire and pride, toward humility, goodness and sanctification.
Just as Elizabeth makes cutting up 10 transparencies and stringing them together at a coffee shop feel totally natural and almost essential, so does her vernacular surrounding spirituality. If you want to know what it’s like having a coffee date with Elizabeth, just look at her tile works. Like the pieces in the gallery, she’s probably doodling something simple yet loaded with symbolism. She’s probably confronting your buzzing mind with steady questions about your emotional world while also sharing her own experiences grappling with desire. It’s hard to say whose voice I hear clearest when I read the text on Elizabeth’s tiles. Sometimes it sounds like her, sometimes it sounds like how I imagine God’s voice to sound like- and sometimes it just sounds like myself. It’s getting hard to tell the difference.