Ellen Driscoll

Ellen Driscoll (born 1953) is a New York-based American artist, whose practice encompasses sculpture, drawing, installation and public art.[1][2][3] She is known for complex, interconnected works that explore social and geopolitical issues and events involving power, agency, transition and ecological imbalance through an inventive combination of materials, technologies (rudimentary to digital), research and narrative.[4][5][6] Her artwork often presents the familiar from unexpected points of view—bridging different eras and cultures or connecting personal, intimate acts to global consequences—through visual strategies involving light and shadow, silhouette, shifts in scale, metaphor and synecdoche.[5][7][8] In 2000, Sculpture critic Patricia C. Phillips wrote that Driscoll's installations were informed by "an abiding fascination with the lives and stories of people whose voices and visions have been suspended, thwarted, undermined, or regulated."[2] Discussing later work, Jennifer McGregor wrote, "Whether working in ghostly white plastic, mosaic, or walnut and sumi inks, [Driscoll's] projects fluidly map place and time while mining historical, environmental, and cultural themes."[1]

Ellen Driscoll
Born1953
Boston, Massachusetts, US
EducationColumbia University, Wesleyan University
Known forSculpture, installation art, public art, drawing
SpouseSteven Manning
AwardsGuggenheim Fellowship, Anonymous Was a Woman Award, Harvard Radcliffe Institute, National Endowment for the Arts
WebsiteEllen Driscoll
Ellen Driscoll, FastForwardFossil; Part 2, #2 harvested plastic, 30'L x 7'H x 14'W, 2009, Smack Mellon.

Driscoll has been awarded fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, Harvard Radcliffe Institute, Anonymous Was a Woman, and National Endowment for the Arts, among others.[9][5][10][11] She has exhibited at venues including the Whitney Museum at Phillip Morris,[12] New-York Historical Society,[13] Boston Center for the Arts, Contemporary Arts Center,[14] and Smack Mellon.[8] Her work belongs to public collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art[15] and Whitney Museum.[16]

Early life and career

Driscoll was born in 1953 into a large Irish-Catholic family in Boston,Massachusetts.[17][18][2] After studying painting and sculpture at Wesleyan University (BFA, 1974), she moved to New York, where she earned an MFA in sculpture from Columbia University (1980) and worked for artists Alice Adams, Ursula von Rydingsvard, Mary Miss and Columbia professor and sculptor William G. Tucker.[17][19][20] Her early sculpture was abstract and inspired by furniture and architecture.[17] In the 1980s, she exhibited in group shows at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, SculptureCenter, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, and DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, among other venues.[21][22][23][24]

Between 1987 and 1990, solo exhibitions at the Damon Brandt, Paolo Salvador (both New York) and Stavaridis (Boston) galleries brought Driscoll recognition for more organic wood, lead and copper sculptures with a medieval sensibility that explored cultural memory and alchemy.[25][17][26][27][28] These archetypal, sometimes foreboding objects—resembling totems, obelisks, horns, gyres, and vessels—suggested archeological artifacts or tools, their functions inexplicable or long-forgotten.[26][17][7] Driscoll frequently blackened or covered the sculptures with skins of lead and oxidized copper whose ornamental, handcrafted effect contrasted with their primal form.[28][26][29][30] Reviews described them as both elegant and primitive[12] with a "strange eloquence";[17] New York Times critic Michael Brenson called them "organic, anthropomorphic machines" conveying humor and impressions of "destruction and renewal, victory and defeat."[25]

During this period, Driscoll began teaching sculpture, principally at Rhode Island School of Design, where she would serve as a professor from 1992 to 2013.[5][31] In 2013, she joined the faculty of Bard College as a professor and program director of studio arts.[32][31]

Work and reception
Ellen Driscoll, The Loophole of Retreat, view of walk-in end of 8' x 8' x 13' camera obscura, wood, and objects circulating above on a wheel, 1991, Whitney Museum at Phillip Morris.

Installation works, 1990s

By the early 1990s, critics such as The New York Times's Charles Hagen noted Driscoll's turn toward installation art bringing "her awareness of the expressive possibilities of abstract shape and her sensitivity to material" to bear on politically and psychologically resonant historical events.[7][12] This new conceptual work examined themes involving boundary crossing, social and personal histories, knowledge and its relation to memory, experience and sensation.[14][33][34]

In three installations, Driscoll combined projected imagery, kinetic constellations of objects and symbolic groupings, creating fluid experiences described as "a cross between primitive filmmaking and antique hallucinations."[3][12][14] The Loophole of Retreat (Whitney Museum at Philip Morris, 1991) was inspired by the Harriet Jacobs autobiography Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861), which traced her journey from slavery and sexual abuse, through seven years of hiding (in the dark, oppressive eaves above her grandmother’s house, her only contact with the world a small peephole), and finally, freedom.[12][2] The installation's centerpiece was a large cone with a door that was constructed of salvaged wooden planks and placed on its side, which echoed Jacobs's claustrophobic hiding space. A small hole turned its interior into a camera obscura projecting enigmatic, Plato's cave-like images of suspended objects rotating on a large wheel outside the dwelling; a portico of floating, battered doric columns casting shadowy forms surrounded the structure.[7][2][12] Critics suggested the work's central inside-out metaphor addressed historical facts of slavery and racism while touching on broader, relevant psychological and perceptual ideas, such as the relationship between vision and power, contradictions between physical constraint and psychological freedom, and the ultimate loneliness of individual experience.[7][12]

Driscoll used similar means in Migration (Contemporary Arts Center and MassArt, 1992–3) and Passionate Attitudes (Thread Waxing Space and Real Art Ways, 1995).[14][3] The latter work examined early studies of the female body and psyche conducted by neurophysician J. M. Charcot, in which he used hypnosis, probes and electrical stimulation to induce states of the 19th-century medical construct hysteria in women patients.[34][3][2] The installation—described as "nearly omnivorous in its intellectual appetite" by Art in America's Nancy Princenthal—featured fabric chambers set into heavy-steel frames of hospital beds that functioned as camera obscuras, projecting ethereal images of a slowly turning constellation of objects, including spinning braids, onto suspended pillows.[3][34][2]

Three collaborative projects similarly gave voice to the under-represented. From There On Up to Here and Now (1994, High Museum of Art) was an installation that Driscoll created with African-American quilters in the Atlanta area focusing on personal iconography and histories.[35][30] For Ahab's Wife (Snug Harbor Cultural Center, 1998), she reimagined that undeveloped, silent female character from Melville's Moby-Dick as an explorer with a powerful presence; the project's performance work and exhibition was anchored by an enormous hoopskirt that mutated between clothing, platform, shelter, screen, blowhole and a roiling sea engulfing and disgorging the heroine.[36][37][2][38] The temporary public project, Mum’s the Word (Boston, 1998) placed 48 paired outdoor banners created in collaboration with aphasia patients on bridges, which served as metaphors for brain-related communication disorder.[39]

Ellen Driscoll, As Above, So Below, Lenape creation story, mosaic, 1998, 45th St. crosspassage, Grand Central Terminal, New York.

Public art projects

Driscoll has produced a number of permanent public artworks that engage the specific geography and history of their sites, while also connecting to universal themes involving movement across time and place.[5][20][2] As Above, So Below (1992–9, MTA Arts for Transit) is a suite of thirteen large mosaic, glass and bronze murals and related reliefs installed in the northern passageways of New York's Grand Central Terminal (at 45th, 47th and 48th streets) that combine iconic forms, multicultural designs, and photographic imagery digitized to pointillist effect.[4][40][5] The overall work forms a visual anthology of ancient and modern cosmological stories that relates to the terminal concourse's historic painted constellation ceiling and connects the daily commute to global time travel; its depicted subjects include Aboriginal and Celtic narratives, the Egyptian goddess Nut, Persephone, Sisyphus, Einstein, and a recurrent train traveling a circular path.[2][4][41][42]

Catching the Drift (2003) and Aqueous Humour (2004) involved water-related themes. For the former, Driscoll created a fanciful aquatic environment in a women’s restroom at Smith College's Brown Fine Arts Center employing blue slip-glaze imagery of waves, fishing nets, hooks, sea life and artworks from the museum's collection that extended to sinks, toilets and an encircling frieze of glass panels.[43][44][45][40] Aqueous Humour consisted of three interactive mosaic tables in the South Boston Maritime Park, built with movable outer rings that shifted port-related fishing, immigration and marine biology designs.[46][47]

Filament/Firmament (2007, Cambridge Public Library) and Wingspun (2008) involved socio-historical approaches. The former is a two-story installation examining women's work (textile arts, in particular), roles and contributions to the city of Cambridge through text, 240 circles of etched glass depicting global textile designs, and a geometric network of woven tension cables suggesting interconnectivity.[20][48] Wingspun is an 800-foot glass mural portraying inhabitants throughout North Carolina's history that serves as a membrane between the Raleigh–Durham International Airport's international and domestic terminals.[5]

In the latter 2000s, Driscoll focused on environmental issues In a series of labor-intensive projects primarily made from found and repurposed, petroleum-based plastic jugs and drink containers (e.g., Phantom Limb, Wave Hill, 2007).[8][49][1][50] These cautionary works spanned 19th-century industry and 21st-century global upheavals involving development and resource exploitation, critiquing contemporary culture's over-dependence on fossil fuels, rampant consumption, geopolitical imbalance and economic volatility.[1][51][8] They included drawings and unwieldy, ghostly landscapes of miniature vernacular structures (bridges, mills, oil rigs and refineries, dredging cranes), McMansions, abandoned shacks, and abstracted landmasses that employed disorienting shifts of scale and perspective.[8][1][5] Patricia Phillips described the eerie, transparent 28-foot landscape, FastForwardFossil (2009–10, Smack Mellon), as "a restless pursuit of meaning in the complex cartography of resources, technology, consumption, and waste across three centuries in global locations."[51][1][8] The installations Still Life (2010) and Distant Mirrors (2011) explored similar themes with tethered landmasses and structures that floated on actual bodies of water. The latter work was set on the Providence River, with elements shifting, rearranging, collecting debris, and evolving (historically, from the city's 17th-century utopian blueprint to current day) during the exhibition in dialogue with the flowing river.[49][1]

Ellen Driscoll, Untitled 3, walnut and sumi ink on paper, 59" x 82", 2015.

With later projects, Driscoll extended her interests to the resilience of the natural world in the face of sociopolitical threat.[1][52][53] The sumi and walnut ink drawings in her "Soundings" (2015) and "Thicket" (2017) exhibitions blended ochre, umber and coffee-colored silhouettes and spectral imagery of ivy skeins, volunteer plants, birds, clothing, skeletal billboards, abandoned loading docks and honeycombed structures into liminal topographies of land and water, culture and nature, ruin and rebirth.[54][52] "Soundings" offered an immersive, composite past-present portrait of Red Hook, Brooklyn that critic Lilly Wei described as mundane and fluid, shifting from abstraction and dissolution to sharp realistic focus in an exploration of adaptability, transition, transformation and ephemerality.[52] "Thicket" included soft sculptures partially attached to walls—some printed with tangled tree imagery—that suggested clothing patterns and city plans or topographical maps cut into cloth (e.g., Stilt, 2014).[54]

Awards and public collections

Driscoll has been recognized by fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation,[9] Harvard Radcliffe Institute, Anonymous Was a Woman,[10] National Endowment for the Arts,[11] New York Foundation for the Arts,[55] Massachusetts Cultural Council, Siena Arts Institute,[56] Brown Foundation/Dora Maar House,[57] and Artists Foundation.[5] She has received awards and grants from the LEF Foundation, American Academy of Arts and Letters and International Sculpture Center,[5][58][59] and residencies from the Banff Centre for the Arts, Bogliasco Foundation, MacDowell, Pilchuck Glass School, Rockefeller Foundation (Bellagio, Italy) and Sirius Art Centre (Ireland), among others.[60][61][62]

Driscoll's work belongs to the public collections of the Addison Gallery of American Art, Boston Public Library, Detroit Institute of Arts, Fralin Museum of Art,[63] Harvard Art Museums,[64] Hood Museum of Art,[65] Metropolitan Museum of Art,[15] Rose Art Museum,[66] Smith College Museum of Art,[67] and Whitney Museum,[16] among others.[68]

References
  1. McGregor, Jennifer. "Fluid Perspectives: Ellen Driscoll," Sculpture, October 1, 2018. Retrieved August 26, 2022.
  2. Phillips, Patricia C. "The Proportions of Paradox: The Work of Ellen Driscoll," Sculpture, November 2000.
  3. Princenthal, Nancy. "Ellen Driscoll," Art in America, June 1995.
  4. Koplos, Janet. "Ellen Driscoll's Passages," Art in America, June 2000.
  5. Riley, Jan. "Finding Resonant Details in a Big Picture: A Conversation with Ellen Driscoll," Sculpture, January 1, 2011. Retrieved August 26, 2022.
  6. Kaplan, Cheryl. On the Waterfront: An Interview with Ellen Driscoll by Cheryl Kaplan, Spokes Press, 2009. Retrieved August 26, 2022.
  7. Hagen, Charles. "When the Outside World is Danger," The New York Times, December 27, 1991. Retrieved August 28, 2022.
  8. Dykstra, Jean. "Ellen Driscoll and Fernando Souto, Smack Mellon," Art in America, January 2010.
  9. John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Ellen Driscoll, Fellows. Retrieved August 26, 2022.
  10. Anonymous Was a Woman. "Recipients to Date." Retrieved August 26, 2022.
  11. Ivey, Bill, Nancy Princenthal and Jennifer Dowley. A Creative Legacy: A History of the National Endowment of the Arts, New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 2001.
  12. Melrod, George. "Ellen Driscoll at the Whitney Museum at Philip Morris," Art in America, June 1992.
  13. Cotter, Holland. "At Historical Society, Emancipation Remains a Work in Progress," The New York Times, June 20, 2006. Retrieved August 28, 2022.
  14. Temin, Christine. "Ellen Driscoll," The Boston Globe, February 1993.
  15. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Lost Geography, 1987, Ellen Driscoll, Collection. Retrieved August 26, 2022.
  16. Whitney Museum. Ellen Driscoll, Zoetrope driven by iron shoes on wheels, 1990, Collection. Retrieved August 26, 2022.
  17. Sturman, John. "Ellen Driscoll: Strange Eloquence," ARTnews, September 1897.
  18. Wadler, Joyce. "An Artist Lights a Little-Known Tunnel," The New York Times, December 3, 1999. Retrieved August 29, 2022.
  19. Tarlow, Lois. "Alternative Space: Ellen Driscoll," Art New England, May 2005.
  20. Frostig, Karen. "Ellen Driscoll: Transforming Transitory Space," Art New England, February-March 2006.
  21. Kingsley, April. The Ways of Wood, New York: SculptureCenter, 1984.
  22. Yau, John. A Contemporary View of Nature, Ridgefield, CT: Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, 1986. Retrieved August 29, 2022.
  23. Raynor, Vivien. "Photos and Sculpture at the Aldrich," The New York Times, November 27, 1988. Retrieved August 26, 2022.
  24. Taylor, Robert. "Sculpture at DeCordova Explores Edge of the 90s," The Boston Sunday Globe, January 7, 1990.
  25. Brenson, Michael. "Ellen Driscoll," The New York Times, May 25, 1990. Retrieved August 28, 2022.
  26. Birkerts, Sven. "Ellen Driscoll," Art New England, Summer 1987.
  27. The New York Times Magazine. "New Faces for the New Season," August 30, 1987. Retrieved August 26, 2022.
  28. Westfall, Stephan. "Ellen Driscoll at Damon Brandt," Art in America, March 1987.
  29. Cyphers, Peggy. "Ellen Driscoll," Cover, May 1988.
  30. Przybilla, Carrie. "Ellen Driscoll," Equal Rights and Justice, Atlanta, GA: High Museum of Art, 1994.
  31. Bard College. "Esteemed Artist Ellen Driscoll To Join Bard College Faculty as Professor of Studio Arts," News, November 12, 2012. Retrieved August 26, 2022.
  32. Bard College. Ellen Driscoll, Faculty. Retrieved August 26, 2022.
  33. Silver, Joanne. "Tug of invisible forces links sculptor's works," The Boston Herald, February 4, 1993.
  34. Zimmer, William. "Parsing the Feminine with a Hank of Hair and a Poet's Touch," The New York Times, January 1, 1995. Retrieved August 29, 2022.
  35. Lota, Louinn. "Equal Rights and Justice," High Performance, Winter 1994.
  36. Jowitt, Deborah. "Beyond human," The Village Voice, September 23, 1998.
  37. Johnson, Ken. "Ahab's Wife, Ignored in 'Moby-Dick,' Tries Again," The New York Times, August 28, 1998. Retrieved August 26, 2022.
  38. Dunning, Jennifer. "Ahab's Wife Dreams, and the Whale Speaks," The New York Times, September 9, 1998. Retrieved August 28, 2022.
  39. Temin, Christine. "Bridging the Divided Mind," The Boston Globe, August 26, 1998.
  40. Calo, Carole. "Public Art/Private Art," Public Art Review, Fall-Winter 2003.
  41. Silverman, Nancy. "The Fantastic Journey," Public Art Review, Fall 2000.
  42. Bloodworth, Sandra and William Ayres. New York’s Underground Art Museum: MTA Art and Design, New York: The Monicelli Press, 2014. Retrieved August 30, 2022.
  43. Geran, Monica. "Awash in Artistry," Interior Design, January 2004.
  44. MacMillan, John. "Flush with Art," Smith College Alumnae Quarterly, Spring 2003.
  45. Rooney, Megan. "Taking Art Sitting Down," The Chronicle of Higher Education, April 18, 2003.
  46. Carlock, Marty. "Ellen Driscoll and Carlos Dorrien," Sculpture, March 2005.
  47. Carlock, Marty. "Urban Design," Landscape Architecture, October 2004.
  48. Temin, Christine. "Watching a sculptor shape a memorial," The Boston Globe, June 1, 2005.
  49. Joy, Jenn. "On Ellen Driscoll's Distant Mirrors,'" Distant Mirrors, Brooklyn, N.Y: Ellen Driscoll, 2011. Retrieved August 30, 2022.
  50. Genocchio, Benjamin. "Modern Ripples From Walden Pond," The New York Times, July 22, 2007. Retrieved August 28, 2022.
  51. Bauman, Zygmunt. FastForwardFossil: Ellen Driscoll 2010.
  52. Wei, Lilly. "Considering Red Hook," Soundings: Margaret Cogswell, Ellen Driscoll, Brooklyn, NY: Kentler International Drawing Space, 2015.
  53. The Boston Globe. "The Ticket," May 17, 2017. Retrieved August 28, 2022.
  54. Durant, Mark Alice. "Lost Cartography," Thicket: New Work 2014–6, Ellen Driscoll, New York: Ellen Driscoll, 2016. Retrieved August 30, 2022.
  55. New York Foundation for the Arts. Directory of Artists' Fellows & Finalists, New York Foundation for the Arts.
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  59. International Sculpture Center. "Ellen Driscoll Receives ISC's 2018 Outstanding Educator Award," News, February 27, 2018. Retrieved August 26, 2022.
  60. Bogliasco Foundation. "1,097 Bogliasco Fellows," Fellows. Retrieved August 26, 2022.
  61. Macdowell. Ellen Driscoll, Artists. Retrieved August 26, 2022.
  62. New England Foundation for the Arts. 2008 Annual Report, Boston, MA: New England Foundation for the Arts, 2008.
  63. Fralin Museum of Art. Passionate Attitudes, Ellen Driscoll, Objects. Retrieved August 26, 2022.
  64. Harvard Art Museums. People, Ellen Driscoll, Collections. Retrieved August 26, 2022.
  65. Hood Museum of Art. Ellen Driscoll, Portrait, Objects. Retrieved August 26, 2022.
  66. Rose Art Museum. Ellen Driscoll, Artist. Retrieved August 26, 2022.
  67. Smith College Museum of Art. "Museum Restrooms as Functional Art," Brown Fine Arts Center. Retrieved August 26, 2022.
  68. University of Michigan Museum of Art. Window, Ellen Driscoll, Resources. Retrieved August 26, 2022.
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