Meet Eleanor Scholz | Visual artist specializing in pyrography

We had the good fortune of connecting with Eleanor Scholz and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Eleanor, why did you pursue a creative career?
I got a job as a high school teacher straight out of college and was prepared to make a career of it. I was pursuing both art and design as a side gig, but hadn’t had enough success yet with either to seriously consider it as a career.

When I picked up wood burning, the response to my work was immediate: I got into several art shows and festivals and started selling work about as quickly as I could make it, which was so wild! It was really hard to do show prep and classroom prep at the same time, and I felt that ultimately I would always prioritize art over another career when given the choice. Being a profession artist was such a fantasy for me, and I jumped on the very first opportunity I saw to pursue it.

I decided to go all in on art only a few months after picking up the wood burning tool for the first time, which in retrospect was a huge leap of faith. I’ve worked plenty of odd jobs since then, and currently have a side career as a dog walker which gives me more flexibility to be experimental with my work, but art has been my primary focus now for the past 10 years.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
I paint, burn, and carve images into wood, combining representational figures and scenes with rich and ornate patterning and lattice work. My art is devotional, time consuming and meditative, and I give a lot of myself to each piece in an effort to communicate and capture the reverence I feel for wilderness and wild spaces.

My work is as much about the process as the finished product, and I think a lot about how the repetition of small, seemingly insignificant marks can build into something remarkably ornate and complex. People often comment that they don’t understand how I can hold such detailed images in my mind when I create a piece, but the truth is that I don’t—I make them one little mark at a time, responding to each line with another, until it builds up into something incredibly intricate.

This is a practice and a mindset that I think can be carried over to seemingly insurmountable tasks, like addressing climate change and environmental disaster. As much as my work is about loving and revering the wilderness, it’s also about my desperation to save and protect what’s left of it. I’m using beauty and the sublime to try to share my love of the outdoors with others, remind people of it’s irreplaceability, fragility, value, and transcendent nature.

I think there’s a lot of tragedy burnout when it comes to talking and thinking about the environmental crisis that we’re in, which can be counterproductive to the cause. My aim is to invite people to connect with my, and maybe their own love of the outdoors, to trigger reactions of reverence and wonder, to consider the devotional act as one of many necessary steps we can take to try to rethink our relationship with the non-human world and the role we play in its protection, or destruction. I’m at my absolute happiest when I’m outdoors, and I think that’s as compelling of a reason to change our behavior as anything. The conversation can be about love, beauty, and the desire to protect and preserve what we brings us joy, and still be productive.

One of my biggest challenges with bring a professional artist is that so much of my personal identity is wrapped up in what I do. When I struggle to come up with ideas for a new piece, or if an artwork doesn’t turn out the way I want, it can be tempting to spiral into existential crisis due to the blurred boundary between my art and myself. I have to remind myself to take a step back when I’m frustrated or burnt out and give myself time to rest, experiment, or grown in new directions. I’m always trying to be better and grow as an artist, and sometimes need to be reminded to stop and appreciate where I’m at in the moment, too. My partner Paddy has been really helpful with reminding me to appreciate what I’ve already achieved, identifying moments I can stop and be proud of the work I’ve done, rather than just anxiously looking forward to where I’d like to be next.

One thing I love the most about my work is that the marks I make with wood burning are permanent, burned into the wood, and can’t be erased. This forces me to embrace the unexpected—if I make a mistake in a pattern, I repeat that mistake throughout the pattern until it becomes part of the overall design. There’s no going back, just learning to improvise and work with whatever happens along the way.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
I live in San Francisco, and it’s such a fun city to show off to visitors. It’s s small city and there’s a lot of wilderness and urban spaces right next to each other which makes it really special. It’s fun to do something like getting drinks and empanadas and hanging out in the chaos of Dolores park, followed by a bike ride through Golden Gate Park, past the buffalo and out to the beach. I love taking visitors up Mt. Tamalpais, out to the Tulle Elk Preserve in Point Reyes, and anywhere that there’s redwoods—Muir Woods, Redwood Regional Park, or down to the Santa Cruz mountains. The wilderness access that we have from this city is tremendous!

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I’d like to shout out my fiancé Paddy O’Leary, who in the past 3 years has gone above and beyond to support my career and my passion, and push me to take big leaps with my work. As a cancer biologist and an athlete, Paddy’s no stranger to juggling career and passion, and I’m deeply impressed by his ability to bring his best self to multiple careers, while simultaneously devoting himself tirelessly to community building and uplifting those around him. Paddy’s a more recent addition to my story, but it means a lot to me to have a partner who believes whole heartedly in what I’m trying to do, who understands and supports the sacrifices I make to pursue art, and if anything pushes me to dive deeper and go even more all in.

Website: www.eleanorscholz.com

Instagram: @instaeleanor

Image Credits
Eleanor Scholz