Biography

 Ellen Kochansky’s artistic practice is rooted in her experience as a textile artist, designer and quilter. With a firm grounding in traditional craft, Kochansky’s work has always stretched those definitions to include experimental fiber and mixed-media art, and community-based public and private commissions as well as site-specific installations. For her company, EKO, she designed and manufactured custom quilts from 1989 to 2001.

 In a career spanning over 30 years, Ellen Kochansky has actively promoted the arts, the preservation and extension of craft traditions, and environmentally responsible practices, and continues to foster emerging artists through teaching and mentorship for all ages. To further these goals, she has launched a non-profit residency program called The Rensing Center.

She has been an American Craft Council Trustee (1989-1993), a National Endowment for the Arts American Canvas Panelist (1997), and a founding Director of Ripple Effect Sustainable Design Group (1999-2001). She has twice been chosen Craft Fellow by the South Carolina Arts Commission. She serves on the Pickens County Cultural Commission and on the City of Clemson’s Green Ribbon Commission. Ellen has shared her experience through teaching and workshops, including Penland, Arrowmont, and the Innovation Institute (McColl Center, Charlotte, NC). She as served as a juror for national art shows such as Cherry Creek, Evanston, and American Craft Council, as well as South Carolina's Verner Awards. Her work is included in The Mint Museum, The American Museum of Art and Design in NY, and the White House Collection, and she has been cited in various book, articles, and television programs, notably CBS Sunday Morning and the book Six Continents of Quilts. A list of exhibitions, commissions, awards and more can be found on her website: www.ekochansky.com.

"Without a doubt working with Ellen was the highlight. Her work, her story, her heart, her compassion were a perfect way to tackle struggles."  - Workshop Student 

Artist Statement

These current expressions represent three inspirations that have generated my recent themes...Personal and universal journaling, the simplicity and transparency of a single textile, and the conviction that we as individuals and as a culture scorn and discard what will prove to have mattered most. They are quilts in structure, using the definition that a quilt is a layered textile "sandwich" with some form of thread holding it together, but they are about the content rather than the surface.

We have what we need. It has comforted me as an artist to forego the nearly limitless material resources that tempt us at every turn. In both two and three dimensions, I am exploring the humble, somewhat random debris generated by our lives on this planet. I delight in the study of those trimmings and findings that have taken on a life of their own. As artists, we commonly choose our own materials, and in a more adventurous development I have come to prefer working with surprise. In community work, the material emblems of other groups continue to challenge my skills and imagination.

Through these works I hope we can recover awareness of our natural frugality, and celebrate the richness of our simplest resources. While we are looking the other way, they have become a kind of compost, and they will fertilize the future if we let them.

"The things we throw away are all still with us. If transforming them thoughtfully into images or products which remind us of our history, or our wastefulness, or our unfinished business, can be a life's work, I'm on it."