“I like natural disasters and I think that they may be the highest form of art possible to experience.” -- Walter DeMaria

Sculptures that mine the textures of nature and the post-industrial landscape

I work in mixed media, using feminine crafts such as knitting, crochet and lace with recycled materials, thematically focusing on the cultural significance of technology.

Using multiple media from the net to site installation, my work is conceptual and project based. I’m interested in staging and visualizing the tension created when control and its release try to coexist as a curated chaos.

What would Carl Andre do if he were part black? Or Ed Ruscha if he were raised bilingual? The challenge of colliding the personal-is-political discourse with the legacy of conceptual and minimalist art practices is what motivates me.

Photography is my tool for examining how lives interconnect, how ideas converge and bounce off of one another, and how the world is changing moment to moment. I pluck images from the real world to model it, to concretize my idea of it.

My work comprises a visual diary, where each instant is isolated as a fragment of a larger and often unresolved narrative. My process seeks to explore those instances when we feel as if we are mere observers to our own circumstance.

Several series of photographic explorations - night photography on subway platforms, urban architecture, photo-text series of long-time Bushwick residents

My most recent work consist of straight lines that through means of systematic intersecting optically curve and create moire like patterns.

I am curious about the human conditions that surround me, especially processes of change and how circumstances affect the choices we make, while acknowledges the cyclical nature of life, where many experiences are more or less universal.

I am a multi-disciplinary artist creating socially minded projects that are deeply personal and anthropologically rich. My projects work to foster connections between viewers and community members, and to encourage dialogue.

My work examines the individual as a complex social product within in a variety of contexts. I create new rhetoric about how we interact, compete or re-invent ourselves using our identity as a “cultural currency.

Ellie Balk is a public artist who's goal is to use art as a tool to bring communities together.