Etta B. Ehrlich, Ph.D

contact : bottleworks@gmail.com

Etta Ehrlich, PhD., is an outsider artist who specializes in
text-based works. She combines a lifelong study of Eastern
spirituality with Western psychology, and creates original text-based
sculptures on antique bottles, window frames and other artifacts and
found objects. She has been practicing Sensory Awareness Meditation
for over 40 years. In the past 10 years, she began creating a body of
works conditioning of six different unique art forms, each of which
combines elements of found art with text in someway. She calls the
larger umbrella concept for all of these works, which she initially
conceived as visual teaching aids for meditation, THE ART OF
CONCIOUSNESS. In creating these works, she uses various media; the
unifying element is her search for ways to manifest insights about
human consciousness, and the transcendent potential of the human mind
in daily life.

In BOTTLE ART: Message on Bottles, she inscribes bottles with text
addressing a wide range of topics ranging from psychology, humor and
meditations to history and sexuality and more. In WINDOW ART: The
Art of Seeing Through, she placed text on a series of vintage window
frames with messages of simple but profound truths. Rather than simply
being seen through, these windows become surfaces for reflection our
own consciousness. She has also created a series called RECYCLE ART,
in which she recontexualizes antique artifacts with text addressing
the subject of time. With PERSISTENCE ART, she uses L.E.D. device that
relies on the persistent image illusion to flash messages about the
ephemeral nature of experience. PORTRAIT ART uses nature portraits
with text applie as if these were the subjects’ thoughts. Finally
COUTURE ART transforms antique fabric into clothing.

Her unique works are difficult to categorize. Some views see a
resemblance to the work of Joseph Cornell in her box dioramas. Some
see a connection to Jenny Holtzer and Barbara Kruger in text-based
art.

A large body of BOTTLE ART work on the subject of meditation has been
collected in a new book, with photography by Virginia Brown called
Meditation Art: Openings to Awareness

In New York, she is represented by Andrew Edlin Gallery