February 20, 2014
Richmond Center for Visual Arts
5:30 p.m.
Barbara Ellmann was born in Michigan and lives and works in New York. Originally trained as a dancer, Ellmann has been working as a visual artist for more than 30 years. Imbued with the feminist ideals of community and sensuous knowledge, Ellmann's aesthetic and her use of encaustic can be traced to her intimate understanding of the body in motion, and in orchestrated space. This sensibility along with her lifelong interest in patterning allows Ellmann to stage sites for the choreography of visual information in her multi-painting installations to be enacted by the viewer.
Among Ellmannʼs accomplishments are permanent public artworks that are part of the collection of the City of New York: seven glass windscreens for the Metropolitan Transportation Authorityʼs Arts for Transit Program at the Van Siclen Avenue station and a 10ʼ x 48ʼ installation of paintings for the Cambria Heights Public Library. For the city of Summit, N.J. Barbara designed faceted glass windows for a bus shelter.
Ellmann has been a teaching artist at Lincoln Center Institute since 1980. A consultant for universities, orchestras, theaters, private schools and arts programs, she conducts professional development for teaching artists and faculty members. Lincoln Center Institutesʼs philosophy of Aesthetic Education helped shape the current practices of Kalamazooʼs Education for the Arts, where a work of art becomes the subject for classroom study. Ellmannʼ s association with the program began in the Summer 2000. Currently, she is also a museum educator at the Museum of Modern Art, and a presenter in the Kennedy Centerʼs National Partnership Program.
Her paintings have been exhibited in galleries and museums around the country and beyond including the Haslla Art World Museum, Bellevue Art Museum, the Montclair Art Museum and the Parrish Art Museum. Ellmannʼs work appears in several books including "Along the Way, MTA Arts for Transit by Sandra Bloodworth" (The Monacelli Press), "The Art of Encaustic Painting: Contemporary Expression in the Ancient Medium of Pigmented Wax" (Watson-Guptill), "Waxing Poetic Encaustic Art in America" by Gail Stavistky (Rutgers University).
Her work is in numerous collections including Peter Norton, Peter J. Sharp Foundation, Leonard Nimoy, Four Seasons Hotel and Resort, Marrakech, Morocco, Haslla Art World Museum, So.Korea, and the United States Embassy in Kampala, Uganda.