Biography

Ellen Garvens has combined photography, video, drawing and sculpture in a variety of ways, pushing against the expectations of each medium.  She is Professor Emeritus at the University of Washington in Seattle, received a B.S. in Art at the University of Wisconsin and an MFA from the University of New Mexico.  Awards include a Fulbright–Hayes Scholarship for research in Cameroon, Africa, National Endowment for the Arts Individual Fellowship Grant, and an Artist Trust /Washington State Fellowship. Her work is in the collections of the Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, The New Mexico Art Museum, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, The Tacoma Art Museum, Allen Memorial Art Museum Oberlin College, and the Yale University Art Gallery among others.

Project Summary

Often starting with found furniture, domestic objects or discarded materials, Garvens builds set ups and photographs them. The arrangements animate a set of ideas about precariousness and futility, embracing serendipity, humor and spontaneity. In previous artist-in-residences (I Tatti 2021, Hanger in Lisbon 2023, Buenos Aires 2024) the work developed in conversation with the materials found on location, the particularities of studio environments she worked in, and by the light, color and atmosphere of each of these unfamiliar places.  

For her current project, Garvens will explore the rural and urban environment around Florence collecting materials for her set ups. She plans to work both inside her studio and in parts of the grounds around I Tatti.  Her constructions are temporary and use the one-point perspective of the camera to collapse or confuse the photographed space. In so doing Garvens is interested in creating visualizations of uncertainty and loss, highlighting the fleetingness of lived experience.