Ellen Driscoll

Ellen Driscoll (b. 1953) is an American artist, who lives and works in Brooklyn, NY, and Tivoli, NY [1]. Her work includes drawing, sculpture, and public art [2].

Ellen Driscoll
Born1953
EducationM.F.A Columbia University
AwardsNational Endowment for the Arts
Websitehttp://ellendriscoll.net/

Early life and education

Ellen Driscoll was born in Boston in 1953. She studied at Wesleyan University where she received a B.F.A in 1974 (cum laude). She obtained her M.F.A in sculpture from Columbia University in 1980. [3] She was a professor of sculpture at Rhode Island School of Design for 21 years, and was a visiting professor at Bard College in 2018.

Career

Her work is a search for finding connections through materials, between entities that appear to be unrelated on the surface. She has worked on a wide range of topics, including environmental, cultural, and sociopolitical themes[4].

Style

Her work encompasses drawing, sculpture and public art.

Some of her early sculptures, such as The Loophole of Retreat at the Whitney Museum at Phillip Morris (1991) and Passionate Attitudes at Threadwaxing Space, New York (1995), were primarily mixed media and found objects.

During her residency at the MacDowell Colony in 2007, Ellen Driscoll made a commitment to work solely with re-purposed and found materials. She was working at the time in collaboration with Golnar Adili and Aimee Burg, on an installation at Wave Hill for "Thoreau Reconsidered". The art connected the ideas of the philosophers' self-reliance, egalitarianism, and respect, with the collection, cleaning, and fabricating of sculpture with materials removed from the waste stream[5].

She started to retrieve plastic bottles directly from the streets to create artwork such as Phantom Limb, FastForwardFossil Part 2, and Still Life.[4]

Themes

Her current work are labor intensive sculptural landscapes criticizing the oil industry and over consumption. She is a member of the collective Project Vortex[6], which aims to educate the general public about the impact of plastics and plastic pollution.

Reception

She is the recipient of numerous awards, including a Sculpture Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1984, a Sculpture Fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts in 1985, and the Guggenheim Fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation 1987. She was recently awarded the International Sculpture Center’s Outstanding Educator Award. [7][8]

Work

Major exhibitions

She has had numerous solo exhibitions, among them, Fastforwardfossil Part 2 at Smack Mellon in Brooklyn, NY in 2009[9], Fastforwardfossil part 3 at the West Cork Arts Centre, Skibbereen in Ireland in 2010, and “Venti Trasversali (Crosswinds)” at the Museo di Storia Naturale dell’ Accademia dei Fisiocritici in Siena, Italy, in 2016.

Public collections

The Loophole of Retreat was commissioned in 1991 for the Whitney Museum at Phillip Morris. [10]

Her first major public art commission from the MTA's Percent for Art program is As Above, So Below at the Grand Central Terminal in New York City (1999). [11][12] The glass, bronze, and mosaic work is an homage to the famous ceiling of Grand Central Terminal's main concourse, and depicts the night sky over 5 continents. Tales and myths from different civilizations about the origin of the world, and the movements of the stars and heavens, are depicting within each representation of the continents. As Above, So Below is a reminder that ancient stories about the stars, can in fact mirror our earthly daily routines.

Her work is in the following museum and public collections:

  • Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy. Andover, MA
  • Bayly Art Museum Of The University Of Virginia. Charlottesville, VA
  • Boston Public Library. Boston, MA
  • Detroit Institute of Arts. Detroit, MI
  • Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College. Hanover, NH
  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Cambridge, MA
  • Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University. Waltham, Massachusetts. USA
  • Smith College Museum Of Art. Northampton, MA
  • The New School for Social Research. New York, NY
  • University of Michigan Museum of Art. Ann Arbor, MI
  • Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, NY
  • Whitney Museum of Art. New York, NY

Awards and nominations
  • National Endowment for the Arts (1984)
  • New York Foundation for the Arts (1985)
  • Guggenheim Foundation (1987)
  • Massachusetts Cultural Council, Sculpture Fellowship
  • Rockefeller Foundation, Bellagio, Italy, Residency (2001)
  • LEF Foundation grant for FastForwardFossil
  • Anonymous Was a Woman Foundation, Fellowship (1988-1989)
  • MacDowell Colony Residency (2008)
  • Sirius Art Centre Residency, Cork, Ireland (2009)
  • 2014 Fine Arts Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters
  • Siena Arts Institute Fellowship (2015)
  • New England Foundation for the Arts grant for Filament/Firmament
  • International Sculpture Center’s Outstanding Educator Award (2018) [13]

References
  1. "Ellen Driscoll". Brooklyn Arts Council. Retrieved 2019-04-20.
  2. "Ellen Driscoll". Project Vortex. Retrieved 2019-04-20.
  3. "Ellen Driscoll". Brooklyn Arts Council. Retrieved 2019-04-20.
  4. "September 2018 Sculpture Magazine - Jefferson Pinder". www.sculpture.org. Retrieved 2019-04-21.
  5. McGregor, Jennifer (October 2018). "Fluid Perspectives Ellen Driscoll". Sculpture. 37: 47–51.
  6. "Ellen Driscoll". Project Vortex. Retrieved 2019-04-28.
  7. Relations, Bard Public. "Bard College Professor Ellen Driscoll Wins International Sculpture Center's Outstanding Educator Award". www.bard.edu. Retrieved 2019-04-21.
  8. "Bard College professor wins International Sculpture Center's Outstanding Educator Award". The Poughkeepsie Journal. Retrieved 2019-04-21.
  9. Dykstra, Jean (2010-01-15). "Ellen Driscoll and Fernando Souto". Art in America. Retrieved 2019-04-21.
  10. Whitney Museum of American Art (1991). Ellen Driscoll, the loophole of retreat : December 4, 1991-February 8, 1992 : Whitney Museum of American Art at Philip Morris. Frances Mulhall Achilles Library Whitney Museum of American Art. Whitney Museum of American Art.
  11. "Ellen Driscoll – Oliver Ranch Foundation". Retrieved 2019-04-20.
  12. "MTA - Arts & Design | MNR Permanent Art". web.mta.info. Retrieved 2019-04-28.
  13. "Ellen Driscoll – Oliver Ranch Foundation". Retrieved 2019-04-20.

http://ellendriscoll.net/

https://www.projectvortex.org/


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