Elliott Zylstra

Elliott Zylstra

Collection

Bio

A current so emphatic ones identity is drowned, lost. A current that evades conception, originless and endless, living, breathing, overflowing all and every which prompts form to recoil in and out of the very vitality invoking it.

My images invite an experiential participation of powers - not grasped but felt. A surrender to the coloring in, of significance and sentimentality. A participation in presence where we are taken outside ourselves by what moves within.

PhoneInstagram

Too Delicate to Behold Too Precious to be Thought

Image: "Only whoso has raised
among the Shades her lyre
dares, with foreboding, aspire
to offer infinite praise.

No one but that one
who has eaten with the dead
their poppies will never forget
the softest tone.

Though the picture in the pond
before us grow dim:
Make the shimmer yours."
-Rilke
Image: Artemis of Ephesus: All things gather in Ephesus around a birth. Hidden in the grove,
Leto laboring in secrecy, the Kouretes beating metal against metal. This birth does not
recede into time. It persists. The mystery is not what was, but what will never end.

Make the Shimmer Yours

"Though the picture in the pond
before us grow dim:
Make the shimmer yours."

Rilke here is understanding our sensual experience and its ever changing nature as something to be treasured. Embrace the transient and let it become apart of you.
This collection acts as an invitation for the participation in meaning beyond the theoretical, and individual. I looked to the myths of the ancients and worship of the Goddesses to cultivate a posture that reenchants sensuality and embodiment beyond spectacle where form gains deeper significance. Figures like Orpheus who, with his lyre harmonize the heavens, man, and nature recognized the sacred as immanent and pursued not the progression of human kind but the nurturing of its sacred roots, which I sought to embody through material manipulation, natural fibers, dyes, and a deep sentimentality towards craft.
Image: The swamp was once a sacred space who's domineering self generating, self consuming nature embodied the value of fertility
Image: The phoenix's deep roots in the solar cycles symbolize rebirth, renewal, and resurrection
Image: The depth of the night sky's blue, Heavens sleep, where fantasy becomes worldly
Image: The strings of Orpheus Lyre invoked beauty so great even Hades himself shed a tear when played

"What heaven, what pleasure does your life offer which outweighs death's delights? Doesn't all that inspires us bear the color of the Night? It bears you mother-like, and you owe all your magnificence to her."

-Novalis