Residencies » Visiting Artists & Writers » 2009 » February » Ellen Altfest

ArtistEllen Altfest

Public Reading/Slide Talk Date: 02/09/2009

Ellen Altfest is a representational painter who lives and works in New York. Altfest is represented by Bellwether and has exhibited in numerous group shows, including Dynasty at Gallery MC, USA Today, curated by Charles Saatchi, at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, and the Drawing Show, curated by Ellen Gallager, at the Boston Center for the Arts. Altfest received an MFA from Yale University. She attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (2002) and was awarded a studio at the Marie Walsh Sharpe art Foundation 2004-5. In 2004 she attended the Dorland Mountain Art Center in the foothills of Temecula, CA.

"The artist's laborious, openly time-consuming, directly from life imaging method pamper the eyes of those who look at the finished pieces, layer upon layer of detail, irregularity and perspective ending in an image that at first seems entirely fragmented but within seconds is as palpably life-like as the original which it mimics. ... Durer comes to mind, as does Chuck Close." Lupe Nunez-Fernandez, Saatchi Online.

NARI WARD

Vermont Studio Center Visiting Artist, 08/12/2008

Nari Ward (b. Jamaica, 1963) received a BA from Hunter College in 1991 and an MFA from Brooklyn College 1992. Exhibitions include two Whitney Biennials, Venice Biennale, and Documenta XI. Ward has also received commissions from the United Nations, and the World Health Organization, and has collaborated with Ralph Lemon, Bill T. Jones and Toni Morrison. Grants include American Academy of Arts and Letters, the National Endowment for the Arts,New York Foundation for the Arts, John Simon Guggenheim and Pollock Krasner Foundations. Ward currently lives in New York, and teaches at Hunter College.

LEONARDO DREW

Vermont Studio Center Visiting Artist

(b. 1969), BFA Cooper Union in 1985. Drew has shown in institutions such as the Hirschhorn, the Smithsonian, the Royal Hibernian Academy in Dublin, Art Institute of Chicago, Miami Art Museum, and St. Louis Art Museum. He has also collaborated with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company and has participated in artist residencies at ArtPace, San Antonio, The Studio Museum of Harlem, and the Vermont Studio Center, in the spring of 1990. He divides his time between New York and Texas.