A dual citizen of the US and Ireland, Ellen Berdinner studied at Pratt and spent two years working for Steve Lopes, an artisan/architectural blacksmith in Port Townsend, WA. She completed residencies at the Art Students League in New York and the Tyrone Guthrie Center in Ireland. She was also awarded the 2012 artist-in-residence from the James and Janie Washington Foundation, as well as received a grant from Cultural Arts Northwest. She currently works in Seattle at the Tashiro Kaplan. You can find her in Studio D.
I love playing with metal whether it is hot or cold. I especially enjoy making individual pieces and then playing with them until they create a unified image or idea, one in which something is slightly askew. I often make the pieces interchangeable, or make the piece itself easily viewed from any angle to emphasize the idea that both the art and the viewer are in a constant state of becoming.
My job as the artist is simply to coax the metal out of its static state and give it another purpose. As with most things, it works best when we are both relaxed.
As for my mesh work, I search for rhythm in the duality of simple lines and how these lines interact with light and space. Shadows and light play an important role both physically and metaphorically by providing an added dimension, one that suggests underlying movement and the constancy of change.