Ellen McMahon – School of Art

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Associate Dean

Professor, Art

Art Bldg, Room 207D
520-621-1493

MFA – Vermont College, MS – University of Arizona

Ellen McMahon uses a range of media (artist books, writing, painting, drawing, photography, design and video) to investigate the relationship between visual art, daily life, and the ways we frame and study social and environmental problems.

McMahon came to the University of Arizona in 1980 to study Scientific Illustration (MS in Biology 1983). After several years of professional experience as an illustrator and graphic designer, she received an MFA in visual art (Vermont College, 1996) and was hired in a tenure track position in the UofA School of Art. Between 1990 and 2005 her work addressed the social and cultural construction of motherhood and the politics of intimacy in the mother-child relationship. Since 2005, fueled by her conviction that art and design are foundational in effecting positive change, she has developed a number of projects that support individual creative inquiry among her peers and students through interdisciplinary collaborations and partnerships with community organizations.

In 2007 McMahon received a Fulbright Fellowship to work as an artist/designer with the Center for the Study of Deserts and Oceans in Mexico and presented her work as a delegate to the World Design Congress (ICOGRADA) in Cuba. From 2010-2012, she served as initiator and director of a collaborative faculty research project focused on regional water, which included 29 participants from art, design, humanities, the natural and social sciences, as well as city and regional water managers. The resulting book which McMahon art directed and co-edited, Ground|Water: Interdisciplinary Responses to a Dry River received national and international design awards and has been collected by over 40 public institutions worldwide.

McMahon’s artist books are in 15 public collections in several countries. Her visual work has been exhibited in numerous group exhibitions and in solo exhibitions “Redressing the Mother” at AIR Gallery in New York, “Maternal Matters” at Cal State San Marcos, and “In Nature | Of Nature | Perceptions of Place” at University of Wyoming. Her published writings include personal essays about motherhood, op-eds about design and the environment, and technical papers about scientific illustration. Her autobiographic essays are published in Mother Reader: Essential Writings on Motherhood (Seven Stories Press, 2002), The Oldest We’ve Ever Been: Seven True Stories of Midlife Transition (University of Arizona Press, 2008), and The M Word: Real Mothers in Contemporary Art (Demeter Press, 2010). Her design work is featured in Clean New World: Culture, Politics, and Graphic Design, (MIT Press, 2002) and Graphic Design: Sustainable Principles and Practices, (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016).

More:

http://www.ellenmcmahon.com

Recent Work

Change OVer Time

Artist: Ellen McMahon

Hemispherical Photographs

Prone to Collapse

Artist: Ellen McMahon

Cardboard, pine needles, video

Phenotypes (installation detail)

Artist: Ellen McMahon

Archival print mounted on aluminum

Genetic Drifters (from Phenotypes series)

Artist: Ellen McMahon

Archival print mounted on aluminum

Heterotic Sympatrics

Artist: Ellen McMahon

Heterotic Sympatrics

Lost Language of a Desert Sea (detail)

Artist: Ellen McMahon

Letterpress, collage

Lost Language of a Desert Sea (detail)

Artist: Ellen McMahon

LEtterpress, collage

A is for Anatomy

Artist: Ellen McMahon

Letterpress

Ground|Water: The Art, Design and Science of a Dry River

Artist: Ellen McMahon

Letterpress, offset printing

Ground|Water: The Art, Design and Science of a Dry River

Artist: Ellen McMahon

Letterpress, offset printing

University of Arizona School of Art

6 days ago

MFA candidate and Arizona Biennial 2020 exhibitor Perla Diaz welcomes you into her studio in this beautiful video from Tucson Museum of Art and Historic Block
www.youtube.com/watch?v=06wmaR0qvRo ... See MoreSee Less

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1 month ago

Congrats to Mariel Miranda for earning the 2021 Marcia Grand Centennial Sculpture Prize!

Mariel will be using the award to bring a dead bird back to life using a taxonomic spell and visual arts.

"My aim in this project is to create an allegorical device to speak about the small and the silent. For the last 12 years I have lived the embodied experience of the daily threat of a narco-state that operates with impunity in my home country Mexico. Before coming to Tucson, I wondered about all those years now of the pain of death that passes through all of us. But also, and above all, I wondered about the immeasurable beauty of the small and silent acts of courage and love that are applied as tactics against all that terror ---- acts that will never get to know."

Want to get involved??? Add a comment below with your favorite three birds in this post before Aug. 23 (first day of fall classes). Mariel will use your feedback to help chose which of these birds will come back to life!

We will share final project and installation site once Mariel is finished!

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If you haven't already checked out the 2020 MFA Alumni Exhibition, you should! Today we're featuring Erin DiGiovanni's installation "Excuse the Mess"

See the full exhibition and artist statement at galleries.art.arizona.edu!

Excuse the Mess is an exhibition of works which replicate function, catalogue and display the commonplace, and combine domestic and recreational. The title is a familiar disclaimer offered to mitigate the potential embarrassment and unease when one enters the intimate dwelling of another, making way for the work itself to investigate and challenge the social and self-stigmatization of addiction and mental illness within domestic settings and American culture.

25% of American children grow up in households where substance abuse is present.1 Studies suggest that up to half of a person’s risk of becoming addicted to substances (nicotine, alcohol, and other drugs) depend on their genetic makeup. Along with hereditary disposition, a person’s environment and learned behaviors, values, habits, and communication styles can put one at risk of self-medicating tendencies as a means of coping with physical and emotional pain.

1 www.drugabuse.gov/publications/drugfacts/genetics-epigenetics-addiction ... See MoreSee Less

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2 months ago

We are so incredibly happy to announce the 2020 MFA Alumni Thesis exhibition! During the last year of their coursework, graduates were poised to exhibit their thesis research when we were hit with campus closure because of the pandemic. As a result, these students missed out on one of the most intrinsic components of their academic studies, presenting a fully developed body of work to the public in the form of an exhibition. Slowly as the world begins to open we are able to host these artists and reflect on the work they completed in those last months of their degree pursuits. Please join us in celebrating our graduates in the 2020 MFA Alumni Exhibition! ... See MoreSee Less

3 months ago

Check out some excellent work from the Illustration + Design Capstone with Simon Hinchliffe this spring! You can see the work at bddy.me/3hHPfSq ... See MoreSee Less

Check out some excellent work from the Illustration + Design Capstone with Simon Hinchliffe this spring! You can see the work at https://bddy.me/3hHPfSq

A huge thank you to Yellow Images for making these projects possible! These images are from students working with Simon Hinchliffe in the ART 365 Identity and Systems Design class creating airline branding using #yellow mockups!

Artwork by: Mayra Taborda, Meghan Hazeltine, Montessa White, Nick Daniels, Riley Hodge, Sophie Baygents, William Vaughn, Xuxian Zhang, Zachary King, Abigail Moon, Anahi Berrellez, Daniela Gonzalez, Jake Polishhook, Jamie Rodriguez, Joey Miscio, Julia Roth, Kat Mcgee, Kathie Heidler, and Lourdes Gomez ... See MoreSee Less

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#uarizonaschoolofart #universityofarizona #uarizona #uofa #ua #arizona #tucson #schoolofart #art #artist #illustration #design #digitalart #airlines #yellow #yellowimages

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