Eleanor Anderson (b. 1988) received a BA from Colorado College and an MFA from the Fibers Department at Cranbrook Academy of Art (’22). Anderson works using a broad range of media including textiles, ceramics, prints and collage. A former Core Fellow at Penland School of Crafts, she has completed residencies at the Textile Arts Center in Brooklyn, NY, The Women’s Studio Workshop in Rosendale, NY, The Tides Institute, Eastport ME, Haystack Mountain School of Craft, Deer Isle, ME and Praxis Fiber Studio, Cleveland OH. She has taught workshops at Penland, Pocosin School of Crafts, as well as been a visiting professor at Colorado College, the Cleveland Institute of Art and College for Creative Studies in Detroit. In 2021 she was awarded the Outstanding Student Award from the Surface Design Association. She currently bases her studio in Hamtramck, Michigan.
Through my art, I engage in world-making through the process of play and material-errantry. My form of world-making uses craft traditions as a flexible constraint; I collaborate with materials and colors to achieve a coherence and consistency finely attuned to my intuitive judgment. I look for openings in the making process where I can ply confident imperfections and deviations, subverting fixed expectations of the tradition or technique at hand. I often use bright colors and repeating patterns as a way of injecting each project with evidence of the exuberant aliveness I feel when making art. My practice seeks to alleviate daily doldrums and spiritless ways of living – instead, transforming objects and spaces into paratelic experiences. I gift these works to the viewer as an optimistic nudge towards joy, connection and a playful awareness of how the larger world could be.
Website : https://eleanor-anderson.squarespace.com