One of PechaKucha Midcoast’s most recent presenters was Elaine K. Ng, a multi-disciplinary artist working with sculpture and architectural installation. After a 10-year career in nonprofit management, she returned to the studio to focus on her own artwork and completed her Master of Fine Arts at Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2014.

Note: Ng’s PechaKucha slides appear in the right column. Click on the photos to match them with the actual slide notes (in italics). Beneath the slide notes will be the deeper story.

Slide One

One of the things I've always loved about a long Maine winter is how it can erase away the year and give us a fresh start in the spring, like how a night's sleep can make yesterday's problems seem a little smaller. This is one of my favorite images of winter from a plane.

I have always traveled a lot, and I love how being on moving vehicles can put us in this strange, suspended space both physically and psychologically. For me, this is often a good place for ideas to percolate with or without my knowing.

Slide Two

A couple years ago, I realized that the landscape image was really similar to this ceramic tile piece I'd made, called Winter is for Forgetting. It was totally subconscious; in fact, I don't think I even realized I was making a landscape piece about winter until after I'd finished it.

This subconscious process is pretty typical of how I work: ideas swim around in my head for a long time, and I might research and think about things, but it could be months or years before anything comes out of my hands that matches up with those thoughts. This process also has a lot to do with what I'm interested in conceptually with my work, which is: the relationship we have with objects and spaces; what influences the way we take in visual information; and how all this affects us as we have new experiences.

 Slide Three

This piece is titled, How to Illustrate a Pause.

I was thinking a lot about how we notate for silence, and how important it is in speaking, and music, and writing. These kinds of underlying systems and structures are really interesting to me because even though we don't really think about them, they're so crucial in helping us to understand things.

Slide Four

I think my interest here has something to do with growing up between two cultures — a Chinese one at home, and an American one in public. It's made me very sensitive to context and nuance, and how we interpret and process information. Sometimes we're conscious of it, but most of the time I don't think we are.

I think a lot about the idea of psychological inattention, and how we can sometimes be blind to things that are physically in front of us. We have to know about them to learn how to see them. I play with this kind of thing a lot in my work — trying to focus people's attention on something that's a bit unnoticed, or making a sort of parallel universe for people to enter. I think really I'm asking people to stop and slow down, to be quiet for a minute so I can show them something and maybe let them experience a little wonder in a regular space.

 Slide Five

This is another window piece that I did at Perimeter Gallery in Belfast (in the back of Chase's Daily). It's called If on a sunny day a window. I watched this window over the year — how the light would come through and change direction and color. And how it drew people toward it, maybe just because it was an opening to the outside.

I work a lot with different types of spaces and architectural elements, and some of the best pieces have been with windows. Windows are interesting because they're so important to telling us where we are inside a building. They define "inside" versus "outside"; however, most of the time we don't think about that and we just look through them.

 Slide Six

In the end, I think I made a kind of portrait of that light, or an echo of it, for people to discover slowly as they moved toward it. This is basically what I do with all my sculptures and installations: they're my attempts to show you things hidden in plain sight, kind of like what snow is about to do for us here, when all of the sudden you're going to see branches you never saw, on trees that you pass by every day.

My work is often very subtle and quiet. I think it's probably because I'm asking people to stop and slow down, to be quiet for a minute so I can show them something and maybe let them experience a little wonder in a regular space.

To see more of Elaine Ng’s work visit her website: elainekng.com

Kay Stephens can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com