Nanci LaBret Einstein, From Then Til Now’ Installation at Stamelos Gallery Center, University of Michigan Dearborn.
If Detroit art can be said to have a defining medium, it is assemblage. The city’s creatives have brought their own distinctive aesthetic to this venerable artform, its particular local character depending on the wealth of discarded detritus they have found in the city’s streets and dumps. Detroit artist Nanci LaBret Einstein, a connoisseur of urban dregs and vestiges, contributes her own particular sensibility to her three-dimensional constructs, drawings and collages in the current exhibition at Stamelos Gallery in Dearborn, “From Then Til Now.”
A graduate of the College for Creative Studies, LaBret Einstein brings an abundance of creative experience to her fine art from 20 years as a product designer, having licensed her images for use on children’s aprons, t-shirts, coffee mugs and even a line of wallpaper. This eclecticism has carried over into her studio practice, where she finds inspiration in unlikely places.
The artworks in the exhibition from “Then Til Now” represent a mini retrospective of work LaBret Einstein has created over the past decade and more. Formats range from low relief to fully three-dimensional sculptures, plus watercolors and digital photographic collages. Her idiosyncratic methods leverage the eccentricities of her source materials to create artworks that both surprise the viewer and satisfy an itch for visual novelty.
Chaos and Confusion Align, 2025, mixed media low relief assemblage, photo K.A. Letts
Typical of the many painting-adjacent low reliefs in the exhibition, Chaos and Confusion Align is built on a Dibond substrate which LaBret Einstein then builds up with industrial foam. Using salvaged bits of vinyl flooring and paper mosaic, she creates a lively, predominantly gray, black and white composition to which she adds unifying splashes of red and yellow paint. As in other wall reliefs in the exhibition, and differently from many other artists who work in assemblage, the artist exercises formal control over her often-unwieldly components through deconstruction, rendering the parts unrecognizable in service to the larger whole. (Although a few notably handsome abstract wall assemblages like Holes (2013) and It Starts Over Here (2014) allow slightly more identity to the constituent parts, while still presenting a unified compositional front.)
Walking on the Sand in No Man’s Land, 2018, mixed media low relief assemblage, photo K.A. Letts
Abstraction is La Bret Einstein’s primary mode, but occasionally she drifts into more referential waters. Walking on Sand in No Man’s Land suggests a topographical map and takes its inspiration from U.S. military deployments. Muddy colors—blacks, browns and olive drab–predominate. Computer components stand in for military structures, packing cardboard evokes tank treads.
Over the last ten years, LaBret Einstein has adapted her creative process as it relates to assemblage into a related body of work in digital photographic collage, with the assistance of her husband, professional sports photographer Allen Einstein. The photographs, taken at her direction, form a digital library of images which are then altered and combined in photoshop to generate what the artist calls “conglomerations.” Ms. Frilly, a digital print on paper from 2014, is a relatively modest early product of the procedure, but over time the digital collages, such as Flower Palette (2016) have become more ambitious in scale and theme.
Ms. Frilly, 2016, limited edition digital collage photo, photo K.A. Letts
Scattered throughout the gallery, the three-dimensional pieces that speak to LaBret Einstein’s spirit of experimental play make up the remainder of the exhibition. Here, the artist allows the components to retain more of their original identity within the structure of each work, and as a group they are more loosely conceived and improvisational in effect.
Several of the free-standing assemblages give distinct carnival vibes. Ride ‘Em Cowboy features cheerful primary colors and the circular composition of an amusement park ride, with the black silhouette of a cowboy positioned midway up the contraption.
Ride ‘Em Cowboy, 2008, mixed media three-dimensional assemblage, photo K.A. Letts
The man-size sculpture Fire When Ready can’t seem to decide whether it is a satellite or a gun (or possibly a space laser?) Here, LaBret Einstein effortlessly combines improbable components into a convincing approximation of something otherworldly.
Fire When Ready, 2015, mixed media three-dimensional assemblage, photo K.A. Letts
Fantasyland, 2010, mixed media three-dimensional assemblage, photo K.A. Letts
Fantasyland, another toylike construct that amusingly includes beads, pedicure toe separators, glue nozzles and many elements that must remain unidentified, casts an intriguing shadow on the gallery wall.
Like other talented Detroit artists currently working in assemblage–Larry Zdeb, Valerie Mann and Shaina Kasztelan, to name only a few of many–Nanci LaBret Einstein has found inspiration that gives meaning to her work in salvaged components gleaned from the city of Detroit. These elements, unique to her, make up a visual language with which she hopes to engage the viewer in conversation:
I create a language in varying mediums and invite you to come along with me into another plane. It is a dialect that you may learn and translate into your own vernacular. These are my means of expression that will carry you into an experience. It allows you to visit a different space in which you are invited to spend time seeing, and encounter things you perhaps wouldn’t have thought of.