Taking the Mundane to the Magical: The Art of Tony Ellis
Tony inspects his ArtPrize2014 entry at Scott Group Studio
It felt too informal to interview artist Tony Ellis (full disclosure: my husband) at home in my pajamas, so we moved our early morning interview to Café Paradiso. After ordering a tea for him (a Brit) and a cappuccino for me (addicted), we start the interview.
“Remind me, when did you start taking photos?” I ask.
“It started when I was working as a land agent for wind energy projects,” he says, “At first, I was taking pictures just for fun. Pretty soon, my love of abstract art kicked in and I found myself seeking out contemporary art-like images—accidental Rothko’s.”
Tony graduated from the West of England College of Art with a degree in Fine Art (Sculpture). He simultaneously learned Transcendental Meditation (TM).
“Photography is all about perception,” he explains, “It’s about having an eye and making an emotional connection with your subject matter. TM has really helped me with this. My work is a visual dialogue, not an inert relationship with the environment. These images call out to be discovered and it’s an exhilarating experience for me as an artist.”
Above: The hand tufted wool and silk ‘green’ rug, based on the image “StreetBox I”, by artist Tony Ellis installed inside The Loft at the Urban Institute for Contemporary Art is a part of UICA’s permanent collection in Grand Rapids, MI.
Tony’s earliest work was photographed on Colorado’s high desert plains, where he discovered abandoned buildings, graffiti covered trains, and old farm and ranch equipment. In California, he preferred industrial settings and the back alleys of Los Angeles and San Francisco. “I love deteriorating street graffiti that is weathered, painted over or, better yet, altered by attempts to remove it,” he explains.
Initial interest in his work came from galleries in San Francisco and the ICON and Teeple Hansen galleries in Fairfield. His 2013 one-man show opened in the Art 52 Gallery in Fairfield, where Tony credits the industrial look and feel of the gallery itself as a big part of the exhibition’s success.
Tony found Art52 Gallery owner Dale Stephen’s advice on the potential for printing on canvas and fabric invaluable, along with his encouragement to upgrade his camera to increase the scale of his work. “Current digital technology opens up all kinds of possibilities for an artist,” Tony says.
At ArtPrize2013 in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Tony discovered that “gallery curators and goers were amazed that my work wasn’t manufactured, but rather found images from places they walk by every day. The takeaway from that show was to let my audience discover for themselves the visual magic of real world objects by not explaining that my work was photographic,” he says. This ‘gestalt’ is beautifully captured in MIU MFA Film graduate Mark Strauch’s video and became the core concept of Finding Beauty: Grand Rapids, his entry for ArtPrize2014.
The 2014 exhibit showcased an exquisite hand tufted wool and silk ‘green’ rug, based on Tony’s image “StreetBox I” and made in collaboration with Scott Group Studio, whose clients include the White House. A second image, “StreetBox II” became a fully automated 9’ X 14’ window treatment. Both of the images were ‘found’ just a block away from his installation site, the Urban Institute for Contemporary Art (UICA). “StreetBox1” is the weathered detail of a UPS drop-box and “StreetBox11” is from a USPS big blue mailbox. An estimated 80,000 people visited the exhibition. The rug remains at UICA on permanent display in ‘The Loft’.
More recently, Kirkwood Regional Center at the University of Iowa campus in Coralville, Iowa added twenty-five of his prints to their permanent collection.
I ask Tony what’s next. “My dream is to take the Finding Beauty project on the road, traveling from city to city and using locally found images to produce art objects suited to each environment.”
Count me in.
Mo Ellis is inspired by art, issues, and progressive ideas. Mo Ellis’ online and print contributions as a writer, editor, website & mobile app project manager, PR and online media director have appeared at: "O" magazine, The Huffington Post, The New York Times, The Des Moines Register, Surface Design Journal, The Iowa Source, KRUU-FM, Iowa Public Radio, Dr. Mercola and Dr. Oz.