Upon graduating from high school, Elaine Langerman was awarded thirteen Gold Keys from Scholastic Art Awards. As a consequence, she was awarded two full-tuition scholarships, one to the University of Georgia and the second from Syracuse University. She attended Syracuse for a year and a half, but returned home to earn her Bachelor of Arts degree from The American University in 1960 and her Masters of Fine Arts in studio art from the University of Maryland in 1978. She has traveled extensively throughout the US, Canada, Europe, Turkey and Israel. She makes painted constructions; paintings; computer-collaged, painted images; unique books, and has recently begun to explore the medium of silverpoint. Her inspirations come from dreams, myth, poetry, and fairy tales.
She has shown in England, Scotland, Ireland, Canada, Lithuania and throughout the US. Some of the places she has shown in are: Franklin Furnace, New York, NY; Szent Istvan Kiraly Muzeum in Szekesfehervar, Hungary, Bright Hill Literary Center; Brand Library and Art Center in Glendale, CA, Columbia/Barnard University Kraft Center for Jewish Life; Washington Square East Galleries, New York, NY; The Temple Gallery, Aberfeldy, Scotland; the Xavier University Gallery in Cincinnati, Ohio; The Katzen Center, The American University; and was part of “Women of the Book”, a traveling exhibit organized by Judith Hofberg which traveled from 1997 till approximately 2000.
Her work in included in the permanent collections of The Smithsonian American Art Museum; The National Museum of Women in the Arts; The National Institutes of Health, The University of Tulsa, McFarlin Library, Special Collections; The University of California Irvine Library Special Collections, The University of Southern California’s Lewis Carroll Alice Collection; The Vernan Kimbrough Memorial Library at The Ringling College of Art and Design; The University of Toledo Libraries; George Mason University, Fenwick Library, Special Collections, Artist Book Collection; Union College, Schaffer Library, Special Collections; Indiana University/Purdue University at Indianapolis, Herron Art LIbray, Artist Book COllection, The Ray Johnson Archive; the Chicago Center for Book & Paper Arts; Art Bank, Washington, DC as well as numerous private collections.
A design based on a painting called “But Only directly Through His Creations” (Liver Series #6) was used for the cover of the two volumes of The Horizontal Society, by Professor/Rabbi Jose Faur.
Langerman was awarded the Collier Alumni Award for the Master of Arts Program at American University. She was also awarded eight artist grants from the DC Commission for the Arts and Humanities from 1992 through 2007. She was awarded a Travel Grant to England by the British Council in 1992, and in late 2016-early 2017, she was awarded a grant from the Franz and Virginia Bader Fund, available to artists living within a 150 mile radius of Washington, DC.
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–Elaine is a fearless artist. She is unafraid to see and fill space in a new way. Her powers of invention, her passion for new materials, her feeling for intense colors perpetually propel her toward artistic renewal.
Elizabeth Hutton Turner, former curator The Phillips Collection, Professor of the History of Modern Art, University of Virginia.
–The viewer’s eyes lead him on quests for hidden treasure, cosmic voyages of discovery, deep explorations of the mind.
Ann Wagner, Curator of Drawings, the Arkansas Arts Center
–Embodying ideas about space and its organization, these objects are Utopian in their playfulness and in their potential for infinite expansion. . . . these sculptures . . . have an air of monumentality.”
Carter Ratcliff, Art Critic, Artforum and Art in America
