In the 70s, when photo-realism first wowed gallery hoppers in New York’s newly vibrant SoHo, the works of Idelle Weber, like those of Richard Estes and Chuck Close, invited such close inspection that people walked up to them with magnifying glasses just to see how something so real could spring from an artist’s palette.
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Weber, who grew up in Chicago, painted New York scenes then. But unlike other photo-realists, who tended to look out at the city’s chromium and neon exteriors, Weber looked down, at its trash. She combed the streets like a mixed-up tourist, scouring the shadows of Harlem and Brooklyn for random collections of debris, soda cans next to packaged goods, or torn boxing posters hyping the next Madison Square Garden wonder. She’d photograph her finds to use as material for her paintings. Oddly enough, Weber lived at the time in Brooklyn Heights, where rows of perennials and the errant branches of a neighbor’s pear tree graced her backyard and the jeweled skyline of lower Manhattan loomed beyond the quiet, turn-of-the-century Promenade, just a block away.
After Harvard she was invited to the Garner Tullis Press in New York, one of the world’s premier print shops and the home of a press that exerts so much pressure per square inch–22,000 pounds’ worth–that when the plates lift from the paper they are nearly ink-free. There she produced larger works on handmade paper in which dramatic sweeps of ink make trees and sky look nearly embossed.
