Tisch Abelow

October 21, 2018

Hello my name is Now Eleanor
I've come here from a small city in the midwest
where I tell people the news on television
Something mysterious happened there
some time ago
Because of that I decided
to come here to study and to bring news about your people;
your hopes, your dreams, your language...
back to the people in my hometown
It could help me, and my people
to understand ourselves better
by coming to understand you...
Now I'd like to show you the programs that I've made
the programs that I'll take back home with me...
In my hometown
many of your words have a different meaning
I'd like to use your words as much as possible in these programs
and so the programs will partly be in your language and partly in mine...
I think that there are not so many differences between people
Our real experiences can be translated somehow

-Robert Ashley, excerpt Now Eleanor's Idea

Now Eleanor's Idea is the title of Robert Ashley's quartet of short operas. These operas are filled with dream-like, eerie narratives, similar to what I attempt to capture in my work. I think about how the mundane and the familiar relates to something abstractly dangerous. I'm talking about the uncanny. The uncanny is connected to family and history on a personal and cosmic level. I often paint from dreams and photographs of family. Eleanor is my mother's name.

x Tisch