The Work
Artworks.
The work, up close
Burlaps
The Burlap Series begins on the floor. Polen works on raw burlap, jute, hemp, and linen laid flat, walking across the cloth as she paints so pigment is pressed down into the weave and bleeds through to the other side. Each piece is layered, flipped, and reworked — sometimes fifteen or twenty times — until both faces of the fabric answer one another. It is slow, physical, unforgiving work: a mark can’t be undone, only built upon. What survives is deeply textured and double-sided — a painting you can read from either side, and want to touch.
View the collection→Sculptures on Canvas
The Kintsugi works are built up rather than painted on. Layers of gesso, plaster, cloth, and resin are sculpted into relief across the canvas, then broken and mended — the fracture lines drawn back together in gold. The technique borrows from the Japanese art of Kintsugi, where a repair is made visible instead of hidden. Up close the surface is ridged and tactile, catching light along every seam; the gold isn’t decoration but scar tissue — proof of something survived.
View the collection→Contemporary Classics
The Classic Abstracts are Polen’s most painterly works — the classic use of canvas, built with texture, ink, acrylic, and, often, unexpected materials pressed into the surface. They are quieter than the burlaps but no less worked: color is layered, scraped back, and rebuilt until the surface holds real depth. Each one arrived on its own, outside any series — graceful, radiant, and complete in itself.
View the collection→Sculptures
The Sculptures step off the wall entirely. Made from resin, metal, marble, oxidized copper, and found material, they carry the same language of layering, fracture, and gold into three dimensions. Some are relief, some free-standing; all are worked by hand until the material feels alive. They are the most physical expression of an idea that runs through everything Polen makes — that texture, weight, and repair can hold as much meaning as any image.
View the collection→Small Works
The Small Works are the larger pieces distilled. Painted and built with the same hands-on process — layered surfaces, raw fiber, gold seams — only at an intimate scale. They are ideal for a shelf, a narrow wall, or a niche, and often become a collector’s first acquisition before a larger commission.
View the collection→Collectors’ Choices
In collectors’ residences.
Polen’s work lives in private collections across the United States, Canada, and beyond — in residences, penthouses, and design-forward spaces where a single piece becomes the center of the room. A few of those collected works are shown here, in the homes that now hold them.
Aston Martin Residences · Chicago · New York · West Palm Beach · Canada
Visit the Collectors’ Lounge→Found something that stops you? Let’s talk about bringing it home.
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