"Dance with Me" 2007-Present

Artist Statement

Partially because I am not from the United States, my displacement makes the idea of losing one’s identity very haunting to me.  Looking for, and understanding my place, in the world has become the force that drives me to make art.
My art is the result of my constant search for answers. “Dance with Me” is a series of prints about dance. It was born from the need to “fit” somewhere.  I found myself wondering what my placement in this society really is; Where do I belong? I am a woman, a mother, a woman artist, and a foreigner.  I spend countless hours at my daughter’s dance studio feeling very sorry for myself, because motherhood has taken over any other interests I have in my life.  As a pastime exercise, I started to draw the dancers during rehearsals, and pretty soon it became more. Working with the Ballet met company dancers, and choreographers, became another cultural experience.  I realize that my art can extend limitlessly, that motherhood and cultural beliefs do not have limits.  “Dance with Me” is about the beauty of dance as I see it; it embodies –to me- everything that my work is about, finding my path…
For “Dance with me” I used traditional printmaking methods, with the use of the computer as a tool to develop my ideas, mostly for size and color combinations. All the works come directly from my sketchbook, my hope is to be able to express the energy and the immediacy of the sketches, and so I mostly did reductive woodcuts and monotypes. There is certain “lack” of predictability in these two processes, and that is one of the most appealing qualities to me for this series.  When I am drawing I respond to the energy of the dancers, the choreographers, and I feel that is important that the process aloud me the same freedom, when I am printing I respond to the marks of the wood, the colors, and the energy of the sketch itself.

Eliana Calle-Saari