Ellen Greene

An “Interlude” post, in our use, is not necessarily a connection between one piece of music and another, but an exploration of artistic work with close thematic engagement with murder ballads. It’s a step outside our “song of the week” or “digital compendium” modes, and a way to see the power of this genre from a different perspective.

Ellen Greene reached out to me through our Facebook page a couple months ago to introduce herself. Greene is a Chicago-based artist, and we’re connected through some mutual friends, including Alison, one of our bloggers. She wrote:

“Omie Wise”by Ellen Green (2011) (click to see larger version)

“I paint on vintage women’s gloves in a tattoo-inspired folk/outsider style and I usually incorporate bits of music, poetry, or phrasing in the images. I did a pair of gloves in 2011 titled “Omie Wise” inspired by the murder ballad. I have been wanting to do a whole series on the murder ballad specifically sweetheart murders and happy to say it is under way.”

As you can well imagine, I was happy to learn of this as well, and have been corresponding with Greene a little bit about this work and how we might feature it here in advance of her September 5th opening of a show of her Murder Ballad Series at the Packer Schopf Gallery in Chicago.

“Omie Wise” (the song) is an old favorite of ours, of course. It was one of the first few songs we featured, and may be due for an update before too long. It continues to resonate across generations. The gloves featured to the right will be accompanied by sister works inspired by other sweetheart murder ballads, including “Banks of the Ohio,” “Poor Ellen Smith,” and “Down in the Willow Garden.”

I thought it might be worthwhile to “paint around the edges” of Greene’s work with a conversation with her about the murder ballad genre and some of her favorites. We’ll start with the interview and feature favorites with a follow-up “playlist” post in a little bit.

MBM: When did you start working with gloves as your canvas?

EG: I’ve always been kind of a fashion hound and a thrift store junkie; so I’ve always been on the lookout for things to decorate myself or my home. The vintage ladies’ gloves in those stores were always off to the side in some hidden spot. They were a kind of hidden exotica, somehow not meant for display.

I found it so fascinating to imagine the hands that were in those gloves and what they did when they were in them. A dress when it comes off a body is just material, but a glove is somehow still a hand. Body marking and flesh has been an interesting subject matter for me, and I found that I just had to paint on those gloves. What I think I liked about them initially was their skin-like qualities. Painting on the hand-like object drew me toward the tattoos. Before the gloves, I was just an oil painter. Now it’s turned into tattoos.

MBM: Which was first for you, the tattoos or the gloves?

EG: I’ve been tattooed since the 90s, since art school. I’ve always been drawn to the folk art forms, even though I was sort of a classic oil painter. Growing up in Kansas, I was always exposed to folk art. Folk art was just kind of in the air. Lawrence, Kansas is a university town. It has a lot of country aspects, and liberal/progressive aspects, but also a lot of frat boys from the university. William Burroughs was also based there, so his influence helped make for a freaky kind of art scene.

MBM: How did “Omie Wise” wind up on a pair of gloves?

Image courtesy of Ellen Greene

EG: When I was working on my first big solo show of gloves, I was really wanting to mine imagery just a little past the tattoo vocabulary. There’s a traditional tattoo vocabulary, traditional forms—the star, the skull , the eagle, the mermaid. It has certain codes and symbols, but it is all very much steeped in a kind of military, working class, masculine culture—early America.

1900-1960 is the historical space that I love, so I was getting into that space. There’s a misogyny and a violence in some ways inherent to the tattoo as an art form, particularly in the vocabulary I mentioned. It presents images of women as sexual objects, lost women, or whores. There were always these symbols.
I’m trying to imagine where I came across “Omie Wise” for the first time. I think I’m just a seeker of musical knowledge, and I’ve always liked folk music. I think I just came across it, and my maiden name is Wise.

MBM: What’s your background with music and murder ballads?

EG: I think I knew about murder ballads beforehand, but I was looking for early American music. I was listening to a lot of that music while I was painting, especially Smithsonian Folkways recordings and the Harry Smith Anthology, and mining my own personal story. I was connecting to a sense of tension in the images—this sweet feminine glove, but the imagery has that aggressive masculine tattoo.
I think that’s what I love about murder ballads, too. They can have that sweet, lullaby form, but the actual nitty-gritty is intensely dark. This is juicy fodder for making a good glove. A lot of the tattoo imagery has that sweetheart imagery, and then the murder cuts that sweetness out.

MBM: You talked about that masculine/feminine juxtaposition in the tattoos. How does that fit into your work on the gloves

EG: Within my work…in this body of work… because the lyrics are very much present, and then the imagery is what is telling the other story. You might see the word as masculine and the image as feminine. The images seem more metaphorical and the lyrics are much more literal. The lyrics become more other worldly in that context. You don’t have to do too much to make it feel topsy-turvy.

The idea of warning young women through murder ballads about the consequences of loose morals is quite interesting. There’s a similar connection in the assumed morals of a tattooed woman. It’s also caught up in the idea of a woman’s ownership of her own body. Tattooing is an act of claiming the body as one’s own. It’s part of what these gloves do.

These issues of ownership of women still permeate our culture. Therefore, when there’s ever a critique of the power that a man may have, a supposed power to do as he wishes to his beloved, we have a hard time talking about that as a culture. We don’t like to talk about how much our culture still believes that men like to own and control women.

I think murder ballads were called “love songs,” because there was an undertone of warning. Don’t get yourself into a situation with a man. That’s the meat and bones to me—for me to dig into, without judgment actually. My people are of that background. I have that Anglo-Irish heritage.

There’s a reason why the traditional tattoo imagery has passed down. I think the old murder ballads are similar. I like the old forms even in their most uncomfortable ways.

MBM: Who does your favorite “Omie Wise”?

EG: Doc and Merle Watson. It’s really listenable. The Watson I like is a solo voice! I like the mellowness- there is a tenderness in his delivery. I’ve heard some really old versions that are just as compelling, just a little scratchier.

MBM: Tell me about music and your painting process.

I’m listening to a playlist while I paint. When I’m actually painting the lyrics out, I have to be careful not to be listening to anything else, or even listening to the words too much. I’ve done the research on the lyrics before I start. But, I’m listening to the music while I do the visual imagery.

Typically I would have a lot more imagery inspiration[from other artists] for my work, but I was actually shocked not to have found as much visual imagery for these pieces as I would have thought.

MBM: You mentioned to me in an earlier conversation that you found that these songs are helpful in processing a range of human experiences. Tell me more about that.

“Down in the Willow Garden” mixed media collage on paper Ellen Greene, 2014

EG: There’s macro trauma and micro trauma. We can think of these songs culturally, in terms of what they mean, but on the small level what I like to think about is the intimacy of what inspired people to write these songs early on as individuals. I’m trying to imagine the unknown, unnamed Pollys, Omies, Ellen Smiths. The songs live on and the songs carry their name, but there’s something about her voice that’s not there.

It’s almost like I have a desire to make the murder ballads deeper by infusing them with my own angster narrative that sort of makes them real again. They’re a great place to analyze and get a bit of distance from the personal angst. There’s something that causes us to want to get in there deeper. It’s trying to tell these stories of our own lives, or having permission through these songs to talk about the horrible or traumatic things that have happened to us.

When I was eighteen, my best friend was murdered by her boyfriend. When I hear a murder ballad, it automatically has a weight to it that helps me process that trauma. That’s stuff you have to work through your whole life about. And now, being a mother of girls—girls who are going to be teenagers, who are going to have lovers, and boyfriends, and husbands. It gives me permission to process some of that.

Art or blogging or music is the filter that allows us to look at painful things. You pick up so much static from the world, and you have to discharge it somehow. I’m a sensory emotional sponge. Every glove is a piece of me that I don’t have to keep inside me once it’s done.

Next up

In our next post, we’ll feature some of Ellen Greene’s favorites, old and new. Stay tuned!