Bio
Ellen Ramsey (b. 1960, USA) weaves tapestries that explore the inner workings of personal and societal transformation. She earned an MA in Art History, with a studio concentration in photography, from the University of Iowa. Ramsey shows her work widely in national and international exhibitions. She has shown in exhibitions at the Bellevue Art Museum, Bellevue, WA; Ceres Gallery, New York, NY; Morley Gallery, London, UK; Szombathely Gallery, Szombathely, Hungary; the Silvermine Gallery, New Cannan, CT; and The Vestibule, Seattle, WA; among others. Ramsey has been recognized for excellence in her field with notable awards, including the 2019 Heallreaf Prize (UK). Ramsey is a juried member of Northwest Designer Craft Artists. She lives and works in Seattle, Washington.
Statement
I am attracted to the medium of tapestry weaving for its ability to communicate cultural narratives using scale, saturated color, texture, and bold imagery in site-specific contexts.
Since 2020 I have been working with the themes of connection, consumption, and materiality as it relates to technology. This body of work foregrounds the hidden infrastructure of microelectronics, the power of Big Tech, and my ambivalence toward rapid technological change. My weavings combine the characteristic lines and shapes found on circuit board assemblies with text, glitch art aesthetics, and the design language of textiles. This work sits where the analog confronts the digital, where textile practice serves as a bridge between our technological obsessions our desire for warmth and materiality in our surroundings.
About Tapestry Weaving
My fascination with time and metamorphosis is an outgrowth of the medium I work in. Tapestry weavings grow into works of art very slowly in a defined progression. The work starts out as a spare scaffolding of vertical warp threads secured between two beams, and little by little the imagery is developed as the weft is passed, by hand, through the warps, one area at a time, from bottom to top. The work builds over time from literally nothing into a dense cloth that is laden with meaning. Because the work rolls around a beam as it progresses, I can only see a small portion of the whole as I work. Cutting a finished piece off the loom reveals the entirety of the tapestry for the first time, which is always an immensely satisfying reveal.
