Artwork copyright Elissa Greisz. Photo courtesy of Washington State Arts Commission, 2017.

Artwork copyright Elissa Greisz. Photo courtesy of Washington State Arts Commission, 2017.

Night Garden, 1991

Elissa Greisz
American (born 1939)

Location: McClure Elementary School, Yakima

About the Artwork

Night Garden is an elaborate and vibrant mixed-media artwork by artist Elissa Greisz. It is composed in a multi-layered process using paint and small pieces of iridescent foil on linoleum tiles. Greisz notes that this piece “takes place in a nocturnal habitat. The painting is about motion and setting the viewer’s mind and feelings into motion… Things are bubbling out, blossoming, bursting, bristling, as well as attracting and repelling. Everything in the painting is moving, changing, in a state of transformation.”

This artwork was acquired for the State Art Collection in partnership with Yakima School District.

About the Artist

Elissa Greisz is a Port Townsend, Washington-based artist who creates abstract mixed-media wall sculptures, paintings, and weavings. Her work emphasizes intricate patterns. She notes “I borrow from Byzantine art, my Mexican heritage, sci-fi illustrations, other art, ornamentation, jewelry and tattoos. And the transformation of inert materials becomes my modern-day alchemy.”
Greisz studied at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Visual Art and Anthropology from the University of California, Los Angeles. She moved to Washington State in 1983.