Background
Ellen Brooks was born on February 3, 1949 in Los Angeles, California, United States.
Ellen Brooks was born on February 3, 1949 in Los Angeles, California, United States.
Ellen Brooks received both her Bachelor's degree and her Master's degree in Fine Arts from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1968 and 1971 respectively.
Her early works dealt primarily with human figures, notably Beach Piece, an early work in which she employed the photographic medium to address issues of alienation versus bodily presence in space. The work, which featured larger-than-lifesize nude figures in various poses of recline, was installed on Venice Beach, from which the figures appeared to half-emerge from the sand. During her graduate studies she constructed a series of flats which were shown at the Museum of Modern Art in the 1970 exhibition Photography Into Sculpture. The flats addressed similar issues of scale to Beach Piece from the opposite direction, incorporating the viewer’s vantage point from above to obfuscate the objects’ situation in space.
Following her MFA Ellen Brooks moved to San Francisco, where her use of the photograph continued a progression of investigations of scale and installation. He has been teaching at the San Francisco Art Institute since 1974; she also taught at the Chicago Art Institute (1976), the extension divisions of the University of California at Los Angeles and at Berkeley (1971-1975) and Franconia College in New Hampshire (1974).
Ellen Brooks is a member of SPE and of the Artist Committee at the San Francisco Art Institute.