OtherPeoplesPixels Blog

Something Hiding in There, 2016. Oil on canvas. 30" x 32"

ELLEN GREENE's hand-painted, white gloves and tattoo tearsheets augment the visual vocabulary of vintage tattoos—which often objectify the female body—with empowering, female-centric imagery. Her hybrid creatures, like the many breasted jaguar-mermaid and the tiger-headed lady with a gaping, heart-shaped vagina, confront and complicate the objectified female body with new symbols of what it's like to have a female body. She has recently returned to her first love—oil painting—to explore the expectations surrounding the myth of the Ideal Mother. Ellen earned her BFA in Painting at Kansas City Art Institute in 1998. In 2016, her work was included in the group show Spiritual Garb—Collars at Aron Packer Projects (Evanston, IL). Her solo show Murder Ballads was first shown at the former Packer Schopf Gallery (Chicago) in 2014 and then traveled to Lindenwood University in Saint Louis in 2015. Other solo shows include Invisible Mother’s Milk (2012) at Packer Schopf and Ballad of the Tattooed Lady (2011) at Firecat Projects, both in Chicago. Her gloves have been featured in Bust magazine, Skin Deep tattoo magazine, Raw Vision magazine and online features at Mother-Musing, Lost at E Minor and the Jealous Curator. Ellen lives and works in Chicago.

OtherPeoplesPixels: The aesthetics of vintage tattoos dominated your work from 2011-2013. What first drew you to tattoos?

Ellen Greene: Yes, tattoo imagery really began to dominate my psyche and my body much earlier than when it showed up in my work. It all began in the late 90s. I began to get tattooed in art school as a means of self expression and rebellion. I was determined not be just some girl. I wanted to be THAT girl—the one with the tattoos. There were several women in Kansas City who were heavily tattooed at that time, but it was still a rare thing to see. Tattoo parlors then were still part of underground culture. This was before reality TV shows and any sort of mainstream acceptance of tattoos. It was a real act of bravery to walk into a parlor let alone get tattooed especially as a woman.

Light Bringer, 2016. Acrylic on vintage collar, wood and steel frame.

OPP: What other aesthetic influences do you connect with the tattoos?

EG: I loved early Northern Renaissance painting and the way that symbolic imagery was used to tell biblical stories without words. The themes in the paintings covered everything from redemption, love, victory and grace to the depths of evil, pain, loss and suffering. When I looked on the walls of the tattoo parlor, I saw all these little drawings—glyphs—that covered a similar range of meaning and emotion. It’s a visual language rife with subconscious meaning. When you see a snake, a pretty pin-up, a rose, a heart a dagger you intuitively know the emotional equivalence to those images.

Girls Girls Girls, 2015. Painted gloves.

OPP: How did you merge your own content with existing designs?

EG: Beyond being just an Western Christian visual vocabulary, traditional American tattoo revolves around a vocabulary of the sailor/hero. I was interested in Joseph Campbell’s concept of the Hero’s Journey. I was fascinated by the hero, who it is and how he/she functions in society. In looking at my own hero’s journey, I realized that there was little imagery in our Western culture for women to take as their own. Sailors and biker outlaws had ways to mark their victories in their skin but when a woman put those images in her skin she was not a hero; she was a whore.

So I took the sailor tattoos and refocused them as female-centered. For example, I turned the pin-up into a she-beast with a multiple breasts all leaking milk in order to shift the narrative away from the male gaze to an embodiment of the mysteries of female life-giving powers. Giving birth to my two daughters was one of the most gnarly and exhilarating experiences of my life. I had to create images that reflected my personal journey.

Little Omie Little Omie, 2014. Acrylic on gloves. Approx 15"x 23"

OPP: Did you do a lot of research?

EG: I just drew and looked at and drew tattoo images until I could draw in that American tattoo style with my eyes closed. I wanted to have the technical skills of a skilled tattoo artist to really upend the vocabulary. It mattered to me that my friends who were tattoo artists really respected my work. I wanted to reframe the symbols while at the same time respecting the art form.

OPP: Why are tattoos conceptually ideal for exploring stories about and societal expectations placed on women?

EG: In many indigenous, non-Western cultures, women were the main wearers of tattoos, but they were symbols of status not rebellion. In Western culture tattoos are just understood as masculine. It was only recently that women began wearing them. But even today, a woman who is heavily tattooed is viewed as sexually deviant or rebellious by more conservative peers. A man is assumed to have his masculinity enhanced and to have “earned” his tattoos.

I put the tattoo imagery on white gloves initially as a fluke experiment. I just though of a glove as another white canvas to work on. But because the glove is such a symbol of pure, white femininity, the tattoo combined with the glove really had an interesting effect. It became an object that is somewhere between masculine and feminine. It felt like an accurate reflection of who I am and of my experience in my own body. Something unconventional.

Snake Girls, 2011. Acrylic on paper. Approx 11"x14"

OPP: Have you ever designed actual tattoos? Does anyone wear your drawings on their body?

EG: So. I am going to take you to task about the word actual. I am not a tattoo artist, but the designs I make are just as actual as any design hanging on the wall of the tattoo parlor. They have the same potential to be worn as any other tattoo design. But I get what you mean. :)

I have a tattoo of my own design on my body and, yes, several people have tattoos of mine. It’s incredibly cool to see people take these designs that I am using as this theoretical and make them “real” on their body. Maybe thats what you were getting at.

OPP: Point taken. I meant, have you drawn imagery with the intention that it was for skin instead of fabric? I’m curious about the possible difference between drawing for a shaped and moving canvas—the body—as opposed to a static, flat one.

EG: I appreciate your being generous with me on that. Yes, I think that there is a freedom in that I don’t need to consider the body in my designs. So you are right, there is something different about designing on a flat object versus a curved form. But because my designs are based on already existing formulas- i.e. traditional tattoo-they follow certain rules that look inherently look good or function well on a human body. Its why I am so drawn to this particular style of tattoo. There are a lot of trends in tattoo. I’ve been around long enough to see them come and go, but the traditional looks classic, it always will “read” properly. They transcend a certain time or trend, and that is the core component of why I use them in my work.

The Mother's Body, 2015. Painted gloves.

OPP: Tell us about the recurring visual motif of the droplet. It is alternatively a teardrop and a drop of breast milk.

EG: Yes, again, I was/am fascinated by early Renaissance paintings. There is a very famous painting by Dieric Bouts called Mater Dolorosa (Sorrowing Virgin). The way he painted those tears—holy cow! It just blew me away. They are so real looking. His painting skill with those tears allows the viewer to empathize with her suffering. I wanted to be able to use something so small and make it have an impact.

So in the context of my personal symbology the teardrop stands for: tears, milk and blood. These are the fluids of life. In my experience of being a new mother, I remember being so overwhelmed by the degree to which all of these fluids were coming out of me. It was comic and tragic but also amazing.

So I use the teardrop to remember that life-giving power of a woman’s body. Also within our consumer culture “wetness” is somehow related to something shameful. Different products (deodorants, pads, etc.) are always being marketed to us as a solution to “wetness.” These products can only be marketed to us if we buy into the shame of our natural bodies. So to give female bodies constant droplets is part of our heroic symbology. I own all that messy stuff and try to elevate it.

Painted Lady, 2017. Oil on board. 16"x 20"

OPP: You’ve recently shifted away from painting and embroidering on clothing and accessories. Past, Present and Future (2017) seems to be the bridge between the paintings on gloves and the new oil paintings on canvas. What led you to embrace the convention of the canvas?

EG: I began in art school as a painter, but when I had children it was increasingly difficult to have a home studio and oil paint around. I shifted to the gloves and acrylic and mixed media so that I could be efficient and less toxic. During the time that I wasn’t painting, I missed it so much. I dreamt about it; it felt like an essential part of me I wasn’t using.

What led me back to painting was a personal tragedy. In the simplest terms I had a massive emotional and mental breakdown the spring of 2015. My life and family was falling apart, and I was deteriorating mentally and physically to a point where I needed help. Without being too esoteric or spiritually “out there,” it was nothing short of divine intervention that started the healing process for me. So as I have gained a new life perspective I had to finally give myself permission to do my paintings again. And now that I am painting, I feel so healthy and whole. It’s really a testament to the old saying “its never to late to begin again.”

Mom, 2017. Oil on board. 18" x 24"

OPP: The thread of the painted body and motherhood connect these new oil paintings to the older work. How are the painted bodies in Mom and Painted Lady, both 2017, different from and similar to the “tattooed” gloves?

EG: So before I had formulated this elaborate tattoo vocabulary, I painted figuratively and mostly self portraits. When I started painting again, I began where I left off. It had been some 16 years since I had last oil painted. I found that I was not really who I was when I last lifted that brush. It was both exciting and terrifying to get in touch with myself and with the canvas as a creative space.

Mom and Painted Lady are part of a larger body of work still in progress. It’s a slow process, but I am working on weaving together the old imagery with the self portraits in a way that makes a conceptual continuous arc. The older work was more theoretical and based on these glyphs that were trying to gain a new meaning. They were autobiographical but also removed enough that I did not really have to identify too closely. But now, I’m painting my face and my daughters’ faces. It’s us unfiltered—well, filtered through my brain :)

With what I have been through, I am no longer afraid to be direct in expressing and owning my own experience. So with these new paintings I am searching for a kind of truth about myself and my life journey. Very similar in the way the tattoo imagery looked to upend the conventions of the form and to create a new dialog about power symbols, this on-going series of paintings looks to tear apart conventional forms of the ideal mother.

To see more of Ellen's work, please visit artbyellengreene.com.

Featured Artist Interviews are conducted by Chicago-based artist Stacia Yeapanis. When she’s not writing for OPP, Stacia explores the relationship between repetition, desire and impermanence in cross-stitch embroideries, remix video, collage and impermanent installations. She is an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Fiber and Material Studies at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where received her MFA in 2006 Stacia was a 2011-2012 Artist-in-Residence at BOLT in Chicago. Her solo exhibitions include shows at Siena Heights University (Michigan 2013), Heaven Gallery (Chicago 2014), the Annex Gallery at Lillstreet Art Center (Chicago 2014), The Stolbun Collection (Chicago 2017) and Indianapolis Art Center (Indiana 2017). In March 2018, her solo installation Where Do We Go From Here? will open at Robert F. DeCaprio Art Gallery (Palos Hills, Illinois). In conjunction, the atrium will exhibit two-dimensional artwork by artists who were invited by Stacia to make new work also titled  Where Do We Go From Here?

LILY MARTINA LEE memorializes the forgotten, the discarded and the overlooked. She juxtaposes intimacy and anonymity in her embroidered and appliquéd memorials to unidentified human remains, her beaded scratch ticket medallions and her car hood portraits based on the tattoos of fugitives wanted for non-violent crimes. Lily received a BFA in Fibers (2008) and a BA in American Indian Studies (2009) from the University of Washington in Seattle. She received her MFA from the University of Oregon in Eugene (2012). Her work was recently included in Post-Racial U.S.? at the University Art Gallery at New Mexico State University (Las Cruces, New Mexico, 2013) and Across the Divide IV: The New Boondocks< at Center on Contemporary Art Georgetown Gallery (Seattle, 2012). She teaches Sculpture and Fiber Art at Truman State University. Lily lives and works in Kirksville, Missouri.

OtherPeoplesPixels: Your Fugitive Portraits (2011-2012) are based on the tattoos of wanted fugitives and the facts found in legal and news media documents. Some of the crimes the men committed are "escape from community custody," "burglary," “failure to appear: DUI," and "criminal endangerment." Was it a conceptual decision not to include fugitives for more violent crimes, like murder or rape? What makes you pick the fugitives you pick?


Lily Martina Lee: My decision to work with the narratives of fugitives wanted for non-violent crimes was a conscious one. Rather than sensationalize the criminal element, I wanted to make more intimate work, bringing attention to these individuals, where they come from, and the personal narratives and identities as constructed through their tattoos. Their stories may seem banal or even despondent, but they are also so evocative of our present day culture.

I initially researched most-wanted postings in the Inland Northwest region because that’s where I am from. But I also noticed a pattern in higher-profile, national stories: fugitives often seem to run to Idaho or are captured in this region. I always choose people who are wanted in jurisdictions outside of major metropolitan areas. I began to think of this body of work as cumulatively articulating a contemporary iteration of the romanticized west: anonymous and removed from authority.

In order for authorities to know and list tattoos in a Most Wanted posting, the fugitives must be a repeat offenders. These individuals often have lengthy histories of petty crimes. In pouring over the list of tattoos—information which is made public for the purpose of finding and capturing them—I couldn't help but imagine and try to understand the characters of the individuals who had made those specific choices. I read hundreds of cases, paying special attention to those fugitives who had enough tattoos listed so that I could create a formal composition. More importantly though, I became intrigued by the discursive combinations of tattoos, such as a pentagram and Tweety bird, as in Israel "Izzy" Rodrigues, Butte, Montana (Criminal Endangerment), or text in English and Spanish with a Thai name, as in Jimmy "Bam Bam" Rodriguez, Pasco, Washington (Escape from community custody).

Automotive decals and accessories share striking similarities with tattoos in both style and subject matter: flames, Chinese characters, tropical flowers, mythical creatures and religious symbols that are often cliché and rooted in cultural appropriation. Even as tattoos have become more mainstream, they retain their transgressive status, which the marketplace has capitalized on by generating a multitude of consumer products carrying these graphic styles. Despite the commercialization, individuals still permanently mark themselves with such graphics and attach personal meanings to these tattoos. I find this very beautiful; it transcends preconceptions of originality and meaning within a visual language.

OPP: You've used auto body materials like body filler, automotive enamel, fenders, chrome and tires in a number of sculptures, including Universal/Tramp Stamp Soldier (2011) and Nightbringer (2011). Did you have any experience working on cars before you started using their parts in your art practice? What's compelling to you about these materials?


LML: My experience with auto body materials was originally from an observational perspective. In college and during graduate school, I worked seasonally as a flagger at construction sites. I watched cars go by all day and naturally began to personify them as we occupied the same space. It’s a special situation to be clad in safety gear while standing out in a live lane of traffic, choreographing the movement of vehicles. To entertain myself, I began a list of the worst cars I saw each day, where I spotted them and who was driving. For instance, at an apartment complex in Renton, Washington, I saw a gold Nissan Pulsar wagon being driven by a young, Hispanic male.

When I began to use auto body products in my work, I was initially intrigued by the phenomenon of a cosmetic repair. In our society, it often seems like everything is produced for function and cost-effectiveness. However, the whole auto body industry is essentially aesthetic. It is this curious bastion of formalism practiced outside the context of fine art and is even endorsed by insurance companies. I wanted to explore and participate in this phenomenon by physically manipulating these materials to conceptual ends.

OPP: Could you explain the process of working with the body filler?

LML: I use resin colorants to dye body filler, and then apply these colored layers to the car hood. In some cases, I cover colored layers with a fleshy-colored layer (the default color of body filler when using a standard red cream hardener). I carve through the flesh-toned layer into the colored body filler using woodcut gouges and electric and air rotary tools. In other cases, I carve into a filled area of the flesh-toned body filler, and then fill it back in using body filler dyed to different colors. By repeating this process, I achieve a fairly high degree of detail and generate color gradations by controlling the direction in which I spread the body filler into the carved areas. An example is the rays coming out around the cross on Jimmy. I’ve also experimented with different solvents to thin the body filler in order to pour it into molds I make for casting forms like the masks on Izzy. In some cases, I achieve fine outlines by carefully carving the body filler, spraying on a black primer and then sanding it away to reveal the carved areas.

This methodology of inlaying is analogous to the process of tattooing and strengthens the connection between body and car; the body filler becomes flesh. I reaffirm the surface of the car hood by juxtaposing the inlayed imagery with decals, chrome emblems and fabricated steel components affixed to the surface or floating above it, such as the pentagram in Izzy or the numbers in Michael. I challenged myself to work completely with products and materials from the automotive industry. The body filler can be carved, thinned and dyed different colors, and it can be applied to itself or to the steel. The material affords me great flexibility in combining these techniques in each piece.

OPP: How did your Bachelors of Arts in American Indian Studies from the University of Washington inform your beaded work including Regalia, Skulls and Medallions, your series of beaded scratch tickets?

LML: I began doing beadwork long before college under the mentorship of the late Pauline Lilje, an artist of Chippewa descent, and my interest in beadwork partially led me to pursue a degree in American Indian Studies. I was very fortunate to study at a university that had such a department, and I was continuously surprised by the contemporary issues facing Native Americans. My understanding of our nation’s history was constantly challenged and reshaped during my coursework.

While I had done beadwork since a young age, it wasn’t until I became involved with the student group First Nations at the University of Washington that I started to make regalia for formalized events. During my first year in this group, I made a crown for the royalty contest at the annual First Nations Spring Powwow. Royalty are selected—primarily based on dancing, essays and interviews—to be role models in educational and career goals and for their strong connection to their tribal traditions and identity. The winners of royalty contests wear their crowns at all of the powwows they attend throughout the year they hold that title. It was a tremendous honor to make such a crown. Watching Carmen Selam, the winner of the first crown I made, wear it was rewarding far beyond any art-making experience I had previously had. I went on to make another powwow royalty crown and then began to make beaded medallions. At powwows, I often saw people wearing medallions as stand-ins for things that are typically printed on T-shirts, such as sports team logos. I decided to make metal band logo medallions like Slayer Medallion (2009) to function in a similar capacity.

I later referenced the form of the beaded medallion in Medallions. The series explores the relationship between decoration, value and labor, as well as the cliché themes—Gold Rush, Buck$ and Dough and Asian Riches, to name a few—of the scratch tickets. This work has a clear relationship to tribal gaming enterprises, but I’m most interested in drawing an analogy between the status of decoration and the status of Native Nations. Much in the way that American Indian and Alaska Native Tribes are legally defined as “domestic dependent nations” by the U.S. government, decoration exists on the surface of an object. It’s often defined within the context of its surface instead of being a thing unto itself. The analogy is in the struggle to define both tribes and decoration; neither is given full autonomy under the power structures of U.S. law and the art historical cannon. In many critical legal cases where tribal sovereignty has come into question, ambiguous phrases like "quasi-sovereign" or "semi-independent" become law. In conjunction with this body of work I wrote an imaginary court decision in which I use key language from historic cases in Federal Indian Policy that define the legal status of Tribes to talk about the status of decoration in fine art.


OPP: Unidentified is a relatively new series of embroidered and appliquéd memorials based on "police sketches and photos of unidentified remains." On your site, you say, "My designs are made using computer-generated graphics relating to grieving from social networking, such as Imikimis and Facebook cover photos." What are Imikimis?

LML: Imikimis are a brand of pre-made, photo frame graphics. There are a lot of sites out there where you can upload personal images into a computer-generated photo frame for posting on social networking sites. Most of these sites have collections of different themes such as holidays, romance, the seasons and “In memory of.” This paradox of “personalizing” a one-of-a kind photo with a pre-made, computer-generated graphic is intriguing. I have observed the use of these images in social media by individuals who are celebrating a relationship or mourning a loss. I am interested in how grieving through social networking forums can be impersonal but also enables people to have these public conversations about very personal and emotional topics.

OPP: How does the immediacy of grieving on social media relate the slowness of embroidery?

LML: The instantaneous nature of social networking, including the photo frames, makes it impersonal. I am using the slowness of embroidery to complicate that. I pair the police images of unidentified individuals with the computer-generated photo frames in a way that is almost camp. Then I recreate it with appliqué and embroidery to make this digital image physically tangible. The work is both deeply intimate, and yet the subjects remain anonymous. As an artist, I devote my time, labor and thought to these cases of unidentified remains and contextualize them within the historical tradition of memorial embroidery. I am fascinated by how a person could be deceased for decades yet still remain unidentified, especially since there is ample evidence such as what clothing they were wearing and what objects were found with them. I wonder how anonymous their lives were to leave them so unknown. I use embroidery to commemorate their lives, even if I’m the only person to take the time to think about them.

To see more of Lily's work, please visit lilymartinalee.com.

Featured Artist Interviews are conducted by Chicago-based interdisciplinary artist Stacia Yeapanis. When she’s not writing for OPP, Stacia explores the relationship between repetition, desire and impermanence in her cross-stitch embroideries, remix video and collage installations. She is an instructor in the Department of Fiber and Material Studies at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where received her MFA in 2006, and was a 2012-2013 Mentor-in-Residence at BOLT in Chicago. Her solo exhibition I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For at Klemm Gallery, Siena Heights University (Adrian, Michigan) recently closed, and her solo exhibition titled Everything You Need is Already Here opens tomorrow night at Heaven Gallery in Chicago. The opening reception is from 7-11.