As an assemblage artist, Ellen is fascinated by enigmatic harmonies (and disharmonies) and by unforeseen associations—reverberations among seemingly unrelated, seemingly unimportant, objects.
Inspired by Joseph Cornell, Louise Nevelson, and Deborah Butterfield, and more recently El Anatsui and Dario Robleto, Ellen collects and combines materials she finds underfoot or at junk yards, cigar shops, thrift stores or abandoned houses. When creating, she attempts to quiet her linear brain and let instinct lead.
Her work features objects once part of larger sets and, conversely, incomplete sets now considered worthless. By doing this, she asks her viewers to determine what is valuable. She likes working with discarded text books, childhood toys, scientific equipment, and rusting scrap metal (often crushed by cars). She also embraces artifacts of the hidden or receding world, such as electronic resistors, cancelled checks organizers, and the handwriting of people now dead.
By working with rescued and repurposed objects, she is reminded that while the world is complex, fragmented, and unknowable, it is also, oddly and wonderfully, unified.
Below is a sampling of Ellen’s assemblage work. Please feel free to contact her with any questions. Please see this list of dimensions for sizing.
Ellen Orleans 