The Loophole of Retreat, 1991
Commissioned by the Whitney Museum at Phillip Morris
"A large cone, constructed of salvaged wooden planks and placed on its side, could be entered through a small door. The form and materials invoked the low eaves and claustrophobic space that Jacobs endured, as well as the provisional dwellings that homeless women and men build on the street. With a small hole in the wall that emitted light, the dark interior of...
Migration, 1992
Contemporary Art Center, Cincinnati,OH.
An installation in three parts, commissioned by the Contemporary Art Center, Cincinnati The central theme of "Migration" is a play of opposites between remaining rooted in a fixed situation, and the unknown territory of uprooting oneself and creating a new life. There is a large moving shadow wheel which presents a continuous stream of 48 different shadow images which are caught and...
Passionate Attitudes, 1995
Threadwaxing Space, New York
The impulse behind this piece is the work of 19th century neurophysiologist J. M. Charcot, who worked at Salpetriere Hospital in Paris. Charcot studied the attacks in his female patients of what the medical establishment called "hysteria". Charcot theorized that "hysteria" was caused by a lesion in the brain. But because he could never actually locate this lesion, he suspected the female...
Turnscope, 2001
Collaboration with Nick Tobier for the Green Street Gallery, Boston, MA.
"Installations come in all stripes, and frequently they deal with the physical space that they occupy. In this case, Ellen Driscoll and Nick Tobier have extended the reach of their work to include a hefty chunk of the surrounding neighborhood. The Gallery at Green St. is situated in a spcae adjacent to the Green Street Station MBTA stop on the Orange Line,...
Ghost, 2003
Cloth, wood, 18'L x 36'H x 4'W, Smack Mellon, New York
"Ghost"is an eighteen foot long twin of structural beams which hold up the ceiling of SmackMellon Gallery, 19th century spice factory under the Brooklyn Bridge in New York. It is made of semi-translucent starched cloth, and small metal rivets. The beam is held aloft by two eight foot wheels which appear to be caught in the act of rolling it away from its origins up above. Yet...
Betwixt, 2004
Installation at the Motoazabu Gallery in Tokyo, Japan, curated by Zero Higashida, 14'L x 7'W x 8'H, newspaper, cloth.
"Betwixt" is made from the New York Times, and a Japanese newspaper available in the United States. The two newspapers are transformed into fragile architectures which intertwine around each other in the ancient path of a maze. At the edges of the sculpture are micro-scaffolds made of newspaper, as if the piece...
Paper Architecture, 2002
Created with the New York Times, and other print media from countries such as Japan and Holland, these new sculptures reconfigure the daily information stream into micro-architectures. Constructed with trestle girders similar to those found in large civic infrastructure, scaffolding reminiscent of unfinished building projects, and translucent facades in which the print of both sides of the paper is conjoined to create visual cacaphony, these...
Parallax, 2004
Video collaboration with Jane D. Marsching
A collaboration between Ellen Driscoll and Jane D. Marsching. Clementine, an intrepid marionette, explores landscapes both historical and contemporary against a poetic backdrop of sound and text that describe an interior landscape of love lost. Her voyages take her down a mine shaft, into a domestic interior, and up and out to the surface of the moon and beyond to a vista of nebulae...
Veil, 2005
For the Tashkent Biennale, a series of works made with newspaper, cloth, beads.
The series of works entitled “Veil” were created with pages of the The New York Times layered with translucent silk organza, permeated by stains that resemble Rorschach ink blots or maps. Beads sewn into the surface create a third layer of plan views of historic labyrinths. These works traveled to the Tashkent Biennale, Uzbekistan, curated by Andre...