Ellen Lanyon

Urns have funerary associations as vessels created to hold the ashes of the dead. Ellen Lanyon plays around with this idea in “More Strange Games,” her exhibition containing two different series of works on paper. Lanyon’s explorations, however, broadly address transformation as well as flat-out endings. At the heart of each series are two objects: the urn and a mechanical gizmo taken from an illustration by the 19th-century engraver Poyet that looks like a hand-cranked meat grinder.

Lanyon, who early in her career was associated with the Imagists, has been preoccupied with environmental loss in one way or another for decades with her realistic renderings of fish and fowl in fantastical settings. At 80, and with technical skills as sharp as ever, she adds digital technology to her list of concerns. In the hand-colored urn lithographs, birds, dogs or cats seem to inhabit or rise out of a repeated image of an ornate container. In the second and more intriguing series, the mechanical object holds court as processor or receptacle for all sorts of stuff. For instance, in Euphonium & Others, clarinets and other musical instruments are shoved in the top opening of the machine while musical notes are emitted from smaller openings on the sides of the contraption. In Sultan’s Inkwell, fountain and dipping pens surround the machine, which appears to be squeezing a pomegranate—a fruit from which ink was made (along with other natural materials) eons ago. It’s not clear what Lanyon is mourning with these visual elegies, but that doesn’t make these prints any less striking. And isn’t life, at all stages, more interesting with a little mystery?—Ruth Lopez