Elizabeth Ellis is the featured artist for the month of March 2013 at the Alaska Native Arts Foundation in downtown Anchorage. Her solo exhibit is titled "Symbolic Multiplicity," exploring her cultural heritage and weaving symbolism from her travels around the world. Her inspiration is from the mountains and ocean.
Ellis is of Alutiiq heritage from the Chugach Region of Alaska. She was born in Ketchikan, raised in Cordova and moved to Anchorage in the 1990s. She is the daughter of Ron and Gaydell Trumblee, granddaughter of Viola Tiedeman and great-granddaughter of Willie and Mary Kompkoff from what is now called Old Chenega. Her parents now live in New Chenega on Evans Island. The Old Chenega village crumbled and washed away by the tsunami that followed the massive 1964 Alaska earthquake.
"It exemplifies some of my ancestral and cultural background," Ellis said of her current work. "I use symbols and colors to represent who I am as an Alaska Native. By doing research I am more aware of our culture, our traditions and our history. I am appreciative of who I am, where I came from after doing this body of work."
Ellis graduated from the University of Alaska Anchorage in 2011 with a bachelor's degree in art with an emphasis on painting and drawing. She said she knew since she was a youngster that she wanted to be an artist. When she was in high school, she took every art class and liked keeping her hands busy and looked forward to art classes every day.
"People will see an emerging artist. This is a big step for me," Ellis said of her art. "I am a quiet person and my paintings are not. They are vibrant, loud and colorful and I work on a larger scale. I see things bigger and it helps me to paint larger. My mind collages pieces together and I transfer them onto canvas. I stare long and hard at blank canvases all the time and I usually don't sketch out what you see on my canvases. I just do it. I plop paint on and go for it and in the end, hope I like what I see. I am not traditional, I'm out of the norm."
A few people that she is interested in and that inspire her are Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Misato Suzuki and Les Nabis -- a group of post-impressionist avant-garde artists who set the pace for the fine arts and graphic arts in France in the 1890s. She likes street artists Erone', B0130 and Banksy. Ellis also draws inspiration from Alaska Native artists John Hoover, Sonya Kelliher-Combs and Helen Jane Simeonoff, to name a few.
This is Ellis' first show at the Alaska Native Arts Foundation. She has done solo shows at numerous other locations around Anchorage, including the University of Alaska, Snow City Cafe, Tap Root, Midnight Sun Brewery, Zak's Boardroom, Fire Island Bakery, Crush Wine Bar and the Girdwood Arts Center.
Trina Landlord is the Executive Director of the Alaska Native Arts Foundation. She can be reached at trina(at)alaskanativearts.org.