Ellen Leigh

Indianapolis, Indiana

Website
https://ellenkleigh2.wixsite.com/ekleigh

Social Media
Instagram

How would you describe your work?

I make work that uses discarded domestic materials that I deconstruct and then reassemble to create interior landscapes that explore identity. As I was growing up, I felt that there was only so much for me to aspire to coming from a difficult family background with a low socio-economic status. The expectations for what I could achieve in life felt contained to something of a more practical nature; rather than reaching for beauty, I was meant to seek out stability, be resourceful, and always make the most of what was at hand.

Drawing from that background, I learned to make with the materials available to me, often drawn to things that have been disregarded or thrown away. Utilizing domestic objects, that like people, are often marked by their interaction with others, holding meanings and histories within them that sometimes show, and other times are felt. Taking them away from their mass-produced origins by deconstructing them, I then reassemble them into sculptural work that feels familiar through materiality, yet curious through its transfiguration. Finding a sense of agency in the making of impractical things, I look to create beauty where there seemingly isn’t. Using the materials to explore identity and belonging through the lens of an interior landscape. Making work that expresses not only a desire for home, but a playful yearning for a sense of belonging ,abundance, and a connection to nature. Taking the domestic and wilding them into organic forms that recontextualize them, conjuring dreamlike impressions for the viewer to experience and reflect on.

What inspires you?

Color, pattern, music, texture, poetry, & the traces of history on discarded materials.

Can you speak about your process?

I tend to gather my materials from the side of the road, sometimes friends will give me things that they are discarding to use, and other times it is thrift store finds.

I am an intuitive maker and usually find my way with a project as I am in the process of making it. I sometimes will live with items for a while, looking and thinking about them before inspiration strikes which sometimes can take days and at other times years.

I frequently use furniture in my work, particularly wooden furniture if I can find it because of its qualities of warmth, the way it wears, and that it is a material that lasts.

How did you become interested in art?

I used to stay with my grandmother in the summers, when I was little, along with my sisters. My grandmother would tell stories about her family and growing up in a coal mining town in Hazard, Kentucky. She’d also show us the quilts and other needle works that her mother, my granny, had made.

I was transfixed by the idea that the stories and the objects were things that my grandmother and great grandmother had created, taking the everyday and refashioning it into something richer and more tactile, weaving me into a larger history than my own. I wanted the ability to do that too.

Do you have any favorite artists, movies, books or quotes?

Some of my favorite artists are:

Eva Hesse,
Phyllida Barlow,
Hanne Frise,
El Anatsui
Betye Saar
Lee Alexander McQueen
Julia Bland
Louise Nevelson
Tracey Emin
Olga de Admiral

Favorite films:

I love Agnes Varda movies, especially her films Documenteur, Uncle Yanco and The Gleaners and I.

I also love the films of Maya Deren At Land, Ritual in Transfigured Time, and Meshes of the Afternoon

Favorite books:

Look at the Lights, My Love by Annie Ernaux

A Memoir of My Former Self: A Life in Writing by Hilary Mantel

Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton,

Villette by Charlotte Bronte,

Favorite Quote:

If we opened people up, we’d find landscapes. -Agnes Varda

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Patricia Kelly