It's been a busy spring!
We're so happy! Ellen's work has been accepted into three exhibits, and has won 2 prizes! See the details below.
"The Floor Remembers" is a slow-stitched work on tea-dyed linen. It imagines what a dance floor might look like if we could see the ghosts of all the feet that had danced on it over the years. It was accepted in to the In Motion: Making Art Dance exhibit at the Crooked Tree Arts Center in Petoskey Michigan, where it will be on view from May-September 2026. It was awarded 2nd Place in the exhibit!
Ellen and Karen Eckberg's latest collaboration, "Shared Habitat," was accepted into Art Prize 2026 in Grand Rapids. It will be our third visit to Art Prize, and our second year in the beautiful Atrium at Uccello's.
"Winter Mandala" is a 4'x4' painted mandala which was originally created for the Green Bay Art in the Park project. It was accepted and will be re-created for the Little Traverse Wheelway public art project in Petoskey, MI, which will open in late August 2026. What a thrill to have a piece that so many will see!
Floral Mandala is a stitched piece using hand-spun silk and embroidery thread on cotton. It was created to be part of a fundraiser for the Green Bay Civic Symphony in February 2026, and was chosen as one of the top four pieces in the exhibit.
Psst...it's a Telephone Game!
A few years back I was invited to participate in a fun art project. The creators of the project chose a prompt and sent it to the first artist on the list. After the first artist was finished, their work was sent to the next artist in line to be used as their prompt. The project went around the world to hundreds of artists, who posted work from all media. You can find more about that at telephonegame.art. (you can look up random names, including mine, and see what came before and after their contribution). It played out like the children's game Telephone, where one person whispers something to the person sitting next to them, and so on down the line until the final person says out loud what is usually very different than the original!
In January, the creators started a new telephone game which went public in spring of 2026. My piece was a woven Mandala entitled "The Eyes are the Window to the Soul."
We love collaborations!
In 2024, ceramicist Karen Eckberg and I started an ongoing artistic collaboration. Karen, a ceramicist, and I thought it would be fun to play with what ceramics (a medium which is hard and inflexible) and fiber (which is soft and inflexible) could do together. Our first collaboration, Triptych Aerie, consisted of three fanciful bird's nests. It won first place in the Art Garage's "Collaborations" exhibit, was accepted into the Grand Rapids international exhibition Art Prize, and was also accepted into the Wisconsin Visual Arts North Chapter Member show in 2025.
In 2025, we were joined by by a Green Bay sculptor, Naomi Moes. We chose to create a bust of the Greek Gorgon Medusa. Medusa was selected for ArtPrize 2025 and for the Wisconsin Visual Artists North Chapter Member Show in spring of 2026.
Our newest collaboration is called "Shared Habitat," and explores the relationship between humans and the plants, trees, birds, bees, butterflies, and other non-human creatures with whom we share the planet. This piece was accepted into ArtPrize 2026!
There is always a need for craftivism...
I love to participate in Craftivism projects. It's a tradition that has its roots in knitters who knitted code into scarves for soldiers in WWII, suffragists who embroidered their own protest banners, the AIDS quilt, and the infamous pussy hats worn during women's marches in 2017. This winter, I responded to a project which was created to help support people in Minneapolis who had been affected by the harsh activities surrounding the occupancy of the city by ICE agents. A knit shop in Minneapolis created a pattern for a hat based on the hats knit by Norwegians in the 1940s to protest the Nazi occupation. I ended up making 9 of these hats, and donated the proceeds to Minneapolis nonprofits working with students and teachers. They were dealing with students being afraid to come to school, having classrooms disrupted by ICE presence, and anxiety and low self esteem.
I wore my own hat proudly on No Kings Day, March 28 2026.
