Angela Ellsworth is a multidisciplinary artist traversing disciplines of drawing, sculpture, installation, video, and performance. Her solo and collaborative work has taken in wide-ranging subjects such as illness, physical fitness, endurance, religious tradition, and social ritual. She is interested in art merging with everyday life where public and private experiences collide in unexpected spaces.
Her work has been reviewed in Art News, Frieze Art, Fiber Arts, ArtUS, and Artforum.com. She has presented work nationally and internationally including The Getty Center (Los Angeles), Museum of Contemporary Art (Sydney, Australia), Zacheta National Gallery of Art (Warsaw, Poland), National Review of Live Art (Glasgow, Scotland), Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (Los Angeles, CA), Museum of Contemporary Art (Denver, CO), Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art (Scottsdale, AZ), and Phoenix Art Museum (Phoenix, AZ).
She holds an MFA from Rutgers University in painting and performance and a BA from Hampshire College in photography and painting. She attended Skowhegan artist residency on a fellowship and has worked with artists Rose Shakinovsky and Claire Gavronsky (Rosenclaire) for numerous years.
Ellsworth co-founded the Museum of Walking (MoW) in one of the least walkable cities in the US, Phoenix. With 120 square feet of physical space MoW's reach is much wider than a room with four walls. MoW is committed to a conversation of land, action, and site within the context of art.
The Plural Wife Project, navigates issues of the body in relation to gender, sexuality, and cultural histories of the western United States. Exploring the inherent queerness embedded in early Mormon polygamy, the project engages contemporary notions of non-heteronormativity and re-imagines a community of women pioneering an alternative history.
Ellsworth was born in Palo Alto, California, grew up in Salt Lake City, Utah, and resides in Phoenix Arizona where she lives with her partner, Tania Katan, and is a Professor in the School of Art at Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts-School of Art at Arizona State University. She is represented by Lisa Sette Gallery in Phoenix, Arizona and Modern West in SLC, Utah.