Elodie Blanchard: In Fragments
Jane Lombard Gallery is pleased to present In Fragments, a solo exhibition of work by Elodie Blanchard. Bringing together three ongoing series, Trees, Mending Joy, and Vessels, the exhibition explores Blanchard’s longstanding engagement with textiles as a medium for transformation. Drawing from collected fabrics, clothing, Mylar balloons, and remnants gathered throughout her years as a textile designer, Blanchard transforms familiar materials through processes of layering, sewing, and assemblage. Her process is guided as much by what a textile can become as what it once was – allowing texture, pattern, and structure to shape new forms.
Suspended between plant, figure, and sculpture, Blanchard’s Trees take the form of individual figures. Each work is shaped from large pieces of collected fabric and named after someone from the artist’s life. Their forms emerge in response to the qualities of the textiles themselves, with the character of each piece guiding their development. Some extend upward like growing figures, while others turn downward or branch into the surrounding space. Worn surfaces and pieces of fabric become embedded within each work, carrying traces of personal and material histories. Stitching together these disparate elements allows each Tree to develop its own character, becoming bodies that are at once rooted in memory yet continually changing.
The expansive compositions of Mending Joy move between abstraction and landscape. Fabric stretches across the wall in shifting fields that suggest topographies without depicting a specific place. Working through a process of collage, Blanchard brings together areas of density and openness, allowing their juxtaposition to create passages across the surface. The works oscillate between accumulation and release, drawing textile beyond the boundaries of individual objects. The title Mending Joy evokes the possibility of finding renewal through the act of piecing together fragments, creating new connections to landscape, place, and memory. In this way, Blanchard transforms reclaimed materials into an expansive landscape that holds traces of the past while opening onto new possibilities.
As Mending Joy expands outward, Vessels turn inward, collecting and holding. Organic, rounded forms take shape from clothing, Mylar balloons, and other remnants gathered over time. Blanchard’s process of sorting and assembling allows these contrasting materials to coexist, with each piece contributing to the character of the whole. Their surfaces shift between softness and structure, while their scale gives them a presence that is both intimate and monumental. More than containers in a functional sense, the Vessels suggest bodies that collect, preserve, and carry – emphasizing gathering as both a physical and emotional act.
Across Trees, Mending Joy, and Vessels, Blanchard moves between forms that grow, sprawl, and contain. Familiar textiles become figures, landscapes, and vessels, shifting between the organic and the constructed, the intimate and the expansive. Bringing these forms into dialogue, In Fragments considers how gathering, transformation, and repetition can give existing materials new relationships and possibilities.
