San Fernando Valley

Several themes have marked the work of Edie Danieli Ellis: books, the written word and the human form. She’s combined these into stencil cut-outs of torsos, hands, and limbs bound a dozen deep like pages in a book, each layer holding Ellis’ typed prose. The piecemeal bodies and poems were playful recriminations of the physical, emotional and ecological fragmentation of contemporary life.

In a current show, the artist’s exhibition statement is a poem to a bushman whose simple power can reconnect the “bleached skinned,” TV-addicted city slicker with some lost wisdom. To judge from works, what’s been lost is our connection with the earth, its creatures, our potent physicality and spirituality.

Books on view are flat letter-size boxes with small sculptured objects attached to lids. The boxes are painted all over with gritty, pitted pigment that makes them look like they were wrought by a sandstorm. The cover of “Butte” is littered with tiny earthen hued pebbles and little cats and inside are poems related to the land. “Pastoral” features tiny cows grazing on its lid and an interior frontispiece dotted with sculptured horse flies hovering over poetry like it was day-old bread.

Also shown are caricature-like appendages and fetish objects fashioned from stuffed cloth hardened with the same grainy texturing. Out of a pair of stuffed hands erupt spindly forest twigs; a misshapen leg painted electric blue looks like giant pepper hung to dry or a magical talisman. Working with humor and poignancy, silliness and voodoo, Ellis conjures an earth bound spirituality usually reserved for folk or primitive art. (Orlando Gallery, 14553 Ventura Blvd., to Jan. 26.)