Exhibition

November 5—21, 2009

Ellen Babcock

A Site-Specific Installation
Reception: Thursday, November 19, 5-7 p.m., artist’s talk at 6
Note: Poetry reading by Robin Ekiss follows at 7:30 p.m.

Ellen Babcock Installation, photo by Carla Resnick

Ellen Babcock is currently an assistant professor in art at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. She draws inspiration from a panoply of recycled building materials for her sculptures and installations. She has exhibited at numerous Bay Area galleries, including the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, Southern Exposure, the Headlands Center for the Arts, the Exploratorium, and Ampersand International Arts. She recently completed an artist residency at San Francisco Recycling and Disposal and was a resident with the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. She was awarded the Cadogan Fellowship, the Dennis Leon faculty award, and the Headlands Center for the Arts studio award, and was a Headlands affiliate artist 2002-2004.

She writes about her plan for the 1078’s installation, “I came across this small wooden structure in my recent travels—it was at the end of a footpath to a redrock sea arch—a small observation deck intended to frame a particular view of the arch although one could easily see and safely approach the arch from numerous points all around the platform. I would like to build this platform of scavenged wood (big enough for two or three people to stand in) as part of an installation that would also include small watercolor paintings, that, as in my recent show Passage, refer to traditions of landscape painting.”

About her work in general, Babcock writes, “My art practice is characterized by a somewhat restless confrontation with materials. I often choose banal building materials to work with, such as sheetrock, sono-tubes, silicone caulk, or insulation foam. I try to wrestle from these mundane materials some kind of surprising connection to landscape as a way to underscore my desire for a redemptive connection. In order to link the built and non-built environment, I often interrupt bland surfaces, digging beneath them to draw out a sense of fragility and a very precarious balance between activities of construction and decay. Increasingly, I use found or discarded material. Sometimes I respond to the materials present in a site, or materials important to the history and development of a particular environment—such as redwood or silicone/silicon in California. In some works I bring close focus to the evocative particularities of a substance. In others, the material takes on an uncertain or changing identity—actual wood merges with wood painted to look real, or actual rock sprouts silicone veins. Perception and actual identity are questioned. I entertain a push and pull of enthralled captivation and disillusionment in relation to traditions that look to the natural world for immanence, such as scholar’s rocks, seascape painting, or healing stones.”