Multiple Processes, Merging Media

I liked Oscar (see last post) enough to look up more about the artist, Elizabeth Ernst, and her work, and I found this recent description of her process from Tucsan Weekly:

"Elizabeth Ernst’s work is inspired by the trials experienced by her brother David, who was born with cerebral palsy in 1948 and often regarded as a freak. As she says, “The G. E. Circus is a world that I have created where everyone belongs, where the “freaks” and “outsiders” have a loving and caring community — a place where they are the norm.” Ernst sculpts small figures of circus freaks and other characters, placing them in settings like the Refreshment Stand. After photographing the mini-installations to create a narrative, she makes gelatin silver prints, which she subsequently paints and collages. In The Final Act, Ernst creates a demurely dressed woman sitting side saddle on an elephant who looks directly at the viewer, wearing a giant plumed headdress atop a sparkling orange cap, giving her a new voice. Ultimately she merges three distinct media — sculpture, photography and painting — into something utterly new, rescuing figures once relegated to the margins of society and retrieving their spiritual beauty.

I'm immediately reminded of Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen, although there, the community even with its acceptances, departs from the ideal picture of loving and caring. That's an aside.

Naturally, merging of media is conceptually interesting to me since I am interested in the scope of loss and retention of identity through transitional/transformation changes. What level of relevance does moving through the different media have to the meaning and impact of Ernst's work? The final images are deep and moving and draw in the viewer. How much of this do they owe to the process of creating them?

My observations are limited by the fact that I have not seen the work in person, but rather, only through images on the web. I'll have to remedy that. The final images appear as 2-D collages that gain a wonderful physical sense of depth of space and drama from their sculptural and theatrical beginnings.

I do not believe she exhibits other than the final merged collage/photographs, so there's not a way for me to observe and consider the particulars of the changes from stage to stage. Given that the stages aren't shown, the merger is the point, the completed piece being the full integration. Still, I can't help but want to dissect how it got there and the extent to which the stages (particularly the end point of each media's influence) would stand alone in their own right. I suppose it is not unlike being fascinated with the viability of the stages that a print goes through in printmaking, though there, the media is not changing between stages (though method/technique may be).

I also want to see the work animated with the film embellished with hand painting as the stills are embellished -- to take it beyond a "merger" that basically is Claymation. Doubtless, I'm beginning to stray afield from the artist's intentions. Her work is effective and fascinating as is.