Ellen Lesperance Explained

Ellen Lesperance
Birth Date:December 22, 1971
Birth Place:Minneapolis, Minnesota, US
Education:Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture
Alma Mater:University of Washington, Rutgers University
Website:http://www.ellenlesperance.com

Ellen Lesperance (born 1971) is an American artist and educator, known for her paintings. 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, and has three children.[2]

Early life and education

Lesperance was born in 1971 in Minneapolis[3] and raised in Seattle. She was raised in a large, mixed-race family with adopted siblings, which she cites as providing her with "raw, tangible feelings regarding inequity and what it means to fight for justice."[4] 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).[5]

Career and work

Ellen Lesperance employs various art mediums, but she often relies upon the visual language of knitting patterning.[6] 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."[7] 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.[8] 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.[9] 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."[10] In a 2018 review for Artforum, Claire Lehmann describes the paintings as "reanimations of agitators' attire."[11] "Combining the aesthetic pleasure of color field painting, the inexplicable scopophilic compulsion inspired by grids, and the haptic quality of fiber arts into a single composition that also evokes a political tradition is no small feat," art historian R.H. Lossin writes of Lesperance's paintings.[12]

She was an assistant professor at the Pacific Northwest College of Art, where she resigned in 2016 after leading the failed unionization attempt of the school's adjunct faculty.[13] She additionally chaired the Painting Department of the Maine College of Art.[14]

She has received many awards including a Fulbright (2022-2023),[15] a Guggenheim Fellowship (2020),[16] the Pollack Krasner Foundation fellowship (2014–2015), The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award (2017),[17] the Ford Family Foundation Fellowship, a Hallie Ford Fellowship in the Visual Arts from the Seattle Art Museum(2012), and a Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Artist-as-Activist Grant.[18] She is the author of Peace Camps (Container Corps, 2015)[19] and Velvet Fist (2020).[20] In 2022, she was named a 2022-2023 Fulbright Global Scholar as an unaffiliated independent scholar to conduct research titled Peace Women Knitwear: Greenham Common and Beyond in Australia, Italy and the U.K.[21]

Lesperance is also the organizer of the sweater rental project Congratulations & Celebration, in which a recreation of a Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp jumper is mailed around the world to motivate acts of courage.[22]

Exhibitions

Selected exhibitions include the following:

Collections

Ellen Lesperance's work is included in the collections of:

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Ellen Lesperance . Derek Eller Gallery . New York . November 6, 2018.
  2. Web site: 2020-04-08. Seeking Out Imperfection with Ellen Lesperance. 2020-11-01. BmoreArt. en-US.
  3. Web site: Artist Talk: Ellen Lesperance. live. https://web.archive.org/web/20201030050808/https://www.brandeis.edu/rose/programs/2020/artist-talk-ellen-lesperance.html . 2020-10-30 . 2020-11-01. Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University. Ellen Lesperance (b. 1971, Minneapolis, MN).
  4. Web site: Knit, Purl, Protest: The Radical Feminist Stitchcraft of Ellen Lesperance. live. https://web.archive.org/web/20160110215804/http://www.artspace.com:80/magazine/interviews_features/meet_the_artist/meet-the-artist-ellen-lesperance-interview-53404 . 2016-01-10 . 2021-04-05.
  5. Web site: ELLEN LESPERANCE . Adams and Ollman . Portland, Oregon . 2019-12-09.
  6. Web site: Ellen Lesperance (September 6 – October 7, 2018) . Derek Eller Gallary . 2019-12-09.
  7. Web site: Ellen Lesperance - Frieze. frieze.com.
  8. Rattemeyer, Christian (2013). Vitamin D2: New Perspectives in Drawing. Phaidon Press. .
  9. Web site: Ellen Lesperance - It's Never Over - Ambach and Rice - Los Angeles. 2013-02-16. Art Splash. April 19, 2016.
  10. Web site: Knit, Purl, Protest: The Radical Feminist Stitchcraft of Ellen Lesperance. Rosenberg. Karen. January 8, 2016. Art Space. April 19, 2016.
  11. Web site: Ellen Lesperance . Derek Eller Gallery . December 2018.
  12. Web site: Lossin. R.H.. 2020-11-14. Ellen Lesperance's "Together we lie in ditches and in front of machines. 2021-04-05. Art Agenda.
  13. Web site: Treatment of Adjuncts Spurs Protests at Pacific Northwest College of Art. Van Houten-Maldonado. Devon. April 21, 2016. Hyperallergic. April 5, 2021.
  14. Web site: Ellen Lesperance. live. https://web.archive.org/web/20141204091647/http://www.tfff.org:80/artist-gallery/ellen-lesperance . 2014-12-04 . 2020-11-01. The Ford Family Foundation (TFFF).
  15. Web site: University of the Arts London.
  16. Web site: John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Ellen Lesperance. 2020-11-01. en-US.
  17. Web site: 2017 Biennial Awards. live. https://web.archive.org/web/20190311111937/http://louiscomforttiffanyfoundation.org:80/artists_2017/ . 2019-03-11 . 2020-11-01. The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation.
  18. Web site: Ellen Lesperance. Robert Rauschenberg Foundation. 2021-04-07.
  19. Web site: Ellen Lesperance: The Subjects and W.I.T.C.H. 1985 (Aug 9, 2017 – Nov 5, 2017) . Portland Art Museum . 2019-12-09.
  20. Web site: Velvet Fist: Ellen Lesperance. 2020-11-01. Good Trouble. 6 March 2020 . en-US.
  21. Web site: Fulbright Scholar Program. 2022-10-24. en-US.
  22. Afterimage: The Journal of Media Arts and Cultural Criticism, Vol. 44 No. 6, May/June 2017; (p. 33)
  23. Web site: https://hollybushgardens.co.uk/exhibitions/ellen-lesperance-stay-in-the-centre-of-no-mans-land-2024-more/.
  24. Web site: Ellen Lesperance.
  25. Web site: Ellen Lesperance: Amazonknights. 2022-02-28. Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami. en-US.
  26. Web site: Ellen Lesperance: Will There Be Womanly Times?. 2021-11-17. Hollybush Gardens. en-US.
  27. Web site: Buhe. Elizabeth. 2020-03-03. Ellen Lesperance: Velvet Fist. 2020-11-01. The Brooklyn Rail. en-US.
  28. Web site: Dress Codes: Ellen Lesperance and Diane Simpson. 2020-11-01. Frye Art Museum. en-US.
  29. Web site: Less Is a Bore: Maximalist Art & Design. live. https://web.archive.org/web/20190529213952/https://www.icaboston.org/exhibitions/less-bore-maximalist-art-design . 2019-05-29 . 2020-11-01. ICA Boston.
  30. Web site: MASP. MASP.
  31. Web site: December 2018. Claire Lehmann on Ellen Lesperance. live. https://web.archive.org/web/20181201121746/https://www.artforum.com/print/reviews/201810/ellen-lesperance-77811 . 2018-12-01 . 2020-11-01. Artforum.com. en-US.
  32. News: Smith. Roberta. Heinrich. Will. Schwendener. Martha. Steinhauer. Jillian. 2018-09-20. What to See in New York Art Galleries This Week (Published 2018). en-US. The New York Times. 2020-11-01. 0362-4331.
  33. Web site: Still I Rise: Feminisms, Gender, Resistance, Act 1. Nottingham Contemporary.
  34. Web site: EXHIBITION GUIDE Nashashibi/Skaer. Tate.
  35. News: Cotter. Holland. When it Comes to Gender, Let Confusion Reign. 2021-04-06. the New York Times. 28 September 2017 .
  36. Web site: Mizota. Sharon. Review: For Ellen Lesperance and Helen Mirra, the message is woven into the art. 2021-04-07. Los Angeles Times. 27 June 2016 .
  37. Web site: Stull Meyers. Ashley. Ellen Lesperance: We Were Singing at Adams and Ollman. 2021-04-06. Daily Serving.
  38. News: Rosenberg. Karen. Art in Review: Thread Lines. 2021-04-06. the New York Times. 16 October 2014 .
  39. Web site: We Are Changers and Everything We Touch Can Change .
  40. Web site: BALTIMORE MUSEUM OF ART ANNOUNCES FALL 2019 ACQUISITIONS. Baltimore Museum of Art Press. 31 December 2019 .
  41. Web site: Cardigan Worn by One Woman of the Boeing Five, Tried for Entering the Boeing Nuclear Missile Plant on September 27th, 1983, Sentenced to Fifteen Days in the King County Jail for Defending Life on Earth. Brooklyn Museum.
  42. Web site: Somewhere Along the Black Sea in the Distant North-East, or in Libya in the Furthest South, The Amazons – The Woman and the Girl Children – Exist Just Outside of the Range of Normal Human Experience. Kadist.
  43. Web site: Following $12 M. Pollock Sale, Everson Museum Acquires Contemporary Works by Shinique Smith, Ellen Lesperance, More. ARTnews. 7 January 2021 .
  44. Web site: Frac Grand Large .
  45. Web site: Du jaroj da seksa perforto kontrau virinaj Egiptaj manifestaciantoj, kaj jam ni portas trancilojn en la stratoj. Ili volas nin resti en niaj hejmoj, sed ni ..os! Neniam! Bandoj da krimuloj de brutuloj strio ni nuda. Ili venkis, palp kaj seksperfort ni. Aj, Egiptio! Devas ne esti libereco sen la libera la virinaro!. Frye Art Museum.
  46. Web site: Amazonknights. Womonspirit. Womonpower. Glory.. Institute of Contemporary Art Miami.
  47. Web site: Q of Hearts. Minneapolis Institute of Art.
  48. Web site: Ellen Lesperance .
  49. Web site: When all the warheads turn to rust, until our days are done, we'll hold our mother earth in trust, for children yet to come. Museum of Fine Arts Houston.,
  50. Web site: Ludwig Museum. Ludwig Museum.
  51. Web site: Cardigan Worn by Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp Activist as She Left Holloway Prison, Charged with Social Disruption for the Second Time in Two Months, Winter 1983. Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art. 6 December 2019 .
  52. Web site: https://www.pamm.org/.
  53. Web site: Ellen Lesperance: The Subjects and W.I.T.C.H. 1985. Portland Art Museum.
  54. Web site: https://beta.renniemuseum.org/.
  55. Web site: The Path of Feminye. Rose Art Museum.
  56. Web site: Who Killed Karen Silkwood? .
  57. Web site: Lily of the Arc Lights. Whitney Museum of American Art.

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