Ellen Lesperance

Ellen Lesperance (born 1971) is an American artist and educator, known for her paintings. She frequently relies upon the visual vernacular of knitting to describe a female subject divorced from mainly male, Western figure painting traditions. Her works are typically gouache paintings that pattern the full-body garments of female activists engaged in Direct Action protests.[1] She is based in Portland, Oregon.[2]

Ellen Lesperance
BornDecember 22, 1971
Minneapolis, Minnesota, US
NationalityAmerican
EducationSkowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture
Alma materUniversity of Washington, Rutgers University
Websitehttp://www.ellenlesperance.com

Early life and education

Lesperance was born in 1971 in Minneapolis[3] and raised in Seattle. She attended Roosevelt High School. She continued her studies at University of Washington School of Art (BFA 1995), Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University (MFA 1999), and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (1999).[4]

Career and work

Ellen Lesperance employs various art mediums, but she often relies upon the visual language of knitting patterning.[5] In a 2017 article for Frieze magazine, Jen Kabat writes that Lesperance's work "transmits messages about history, feminism and labour through the art of knitting."[6] Citing inspiration from years of working as a pattern knitter for Vogue Knitting magazine, Bauhaus-era female weavers, the Pattern and Decoration Movement, and body-based feminist artists of the 1970s and 1980s, Lesperance's gouache paintings on paper can be followed as patterns to recreate historic knit garments.[7] She sources these historic garments from archival images and film footage of women involved in Direct Action protest, including women from: the Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp, the 1999 Seattle WTO protests, Earth First!, Occupy events, feminist-era protest events, and the feminist art canon.[8] Through studying activists' visual strategies, Lesperance "recognized that Creative Direct Action provides a powerful model for politically-inclined artists... but unfortunately it is creative making that exists outside the purview of contemporary art."[9] In a 2018 review for Artforum, Claire Lehmann describes the paintings as "reanimations of agitators' attire." [10]

She has been an Assistant professor at the Pacific Northwest College of Art, and chaired the Painting Department the Maine College of Art.[11]

She has received many awards including a Guggenheim Fellowship (2020),[12] the Pollack Krasner Foundation fellowship (2014–2015), the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation (2017),[13] the Ford Family Foundation, Hallie Ford Fellow in the Visual Arts (2012),[11] the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, Art Matters, and the Puffin Foundation. She is the author of Peace Camps (Container Corps, 2015)[14] and Velvet Fist (2020).[15]

Lesperance is also the organizer of the sweater rental project Congratulations & Celebration,[2] in which a recreation of a Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp jumper is mailed around the world to motivate acts of courage.[16]

Exhibitions

Selected exhibitions include the following.

References
  1. "Ellen Lesperance". New York: Derek Eller Gallery. November 6, 2018.
  2. "Seeking Out Imperfection with Ellen Lesperance". BmoreArt. 2020-04-08. Retrieved 2020-11-01.
  3. "Artist Talk: Ellen Lesperance". Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University. Retrieved 2020-11-01. Ellen Lesperance (b. 1971, Minneapolis, MN)
  4. "ELLEN LESPERANCE". Portland, Oregon: Adams and Ollman. Retrieved 2019-12-09.
  5. "Ellen Lesperance (September 6 – October 7, 2018)". Derek Eller Gallary. Retrieved 2019-12-09.
  6. "Ellen Lesperance - Frieze". frieze.com.
  7. Rattemeyer, Christian (2013). Vitamin D2: New Perspectives in Drawing. Phaidon Press. ISBN 0714865281.
  8. "Ellen Lesperance - It's Never Over - Ambach and Rice - Los Angeles". Art Splash. 2013-02-16. Retrieved April 19, 2016.
  9. Rosenberg, Karen (January 8, 2016). "Knit, Purl, Protest: The Radical Feminist Stitchcraft of Ellen Lesperance". Art Space. Retrieved April 19, 2016.
  10. "Ellen Lesperance". Derek Eller Gallery. December 2018.
  11. "Ellen Lesperance". The Ford Family Foundation (TFFF). Retrieved 2020-11-01.
  12. "John Simon Guggenheim Foundation | Ellen Lesperance". Retrieved 2020-11-01.
  13. "2017 Biennial Awards". The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation. Retrieved 2020-11-01.
  14. "Ellen Lesperance: The Subjects and W.I.T.C.H. 1985 (Aug 9, 2017 – Nov 5, 2017)". Portland Art Museum. Retrieved 2019-12-09.
  15. "Velvet Fist: Ellen Lesperance". Good Trouble. Retrieved 2020-11-01.
  16. Afterimage: The Journal of Media Arts and Cultural Criticism, Vol. 44 No. 6, May/June 2017; (p. 33)
  17. Buhe, Elizabeth (2020-03-03). "Ellen Lesperance: Velvet Fist". The Brooklyn Rail. Retrieved 2020-11-01.
  18. "Dress Codes: Ellen Lesperance and Diane Simpson". Frye Art Museum. Retrieved 2020-11-01.
  19. "Less Is a Bore: Maximalist Art & Design". ICA Boston. Retrieved 2020-11-01.
  20. "MASP". MASP.
  21. "Claire Lehmann on Ellen Lesperance". Artforum.com. December 2018. Retrieved 2020-11-01.
  22. Smith, Roberta; Heinrich, Will; Schwendener, Martha; Steinhauer, Jillian (2018-09-20). "What to See in New York Art Galleries This Week (Published 2018)". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-11-01.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.