81-year-old artist Elinor Evans weaves lifelong memories into collage using scraps, tidbits of her many experiences

by Jennifer Ruisaard

News Reporter

Torn papers, threads, letters and memories inspired a former art and architecture student to design the collages, "Love Letters and Other Messages," which will be on display until April 12 at the UH College of Architecture Gallery.

"I wanted to play around like a child," said Elinor Evans, 81. "I put pieces together that I thought looked good together and colors that I thought looked good together."

Since early childhood, Evans has had a passion for making things out of paper and threads. In the third grade, she would help her teacher assist other students in her art class. She constructed each collage from scraps of paper she had collected from the streets and received from friends over the years.

"Everything in each of them has some significance in her life," said Evans' friend, Mary Ellen Allen. "She would look at a piece and then she'd remember something else she had in this box 20 years ago, or in this box 10 years ago."

An artist all her life, Evans has woven many weavings and painted pictures using mediums such as watercolors and oils.

Along with painting, Evans taught art classes at Oklahoma State University. Last year, she quit lecturing at Rice University, where she retired from teaching in the architecture school in 1985.

Art historian Diane Radycki said the style of the collages resembles contemporary art. She said the collages seem to have their own style of modern art.

Evans worked on the collages from 1993 to 1996.

"She would work on three, four, five or six at a time," Allen said. "She had them sort of spread out all over her home. She put one piece together, and that would generate an idea for another piece."

One of her works, "Messages from Mary Ellen's Bolivar," is made from a piece of paper Allen had given her. Evans named most of her paintings from the pieces in them that inspired her most.

"I had to think a little hard about what I was going to call them. I didn't set out to make an image that would mean something," Evans said.

Another piece called "From Cavafy to Jackie" depicts the poem by the Greek poet Cavafy read at Jacqueline (Kennedy) Onassis' funeral. The piece of thread outlining the poem is Jackie's life, Evans says.

In the fall, Evans' show will go to the University of Southern California and later on to Yale. Evans, who has many pieces of paper left, plans to make more to add to her collage collection later on in the year.