Artist Statement/ Biography

Ella Weber maintains menial jobs, unrelated to the arts, as a means to fuel her practice. Through humor, video, print and the labor of an 8-hour shift, her work draws connections between consumption, the body, sexuality and spirituality. Residing in fly-over-country, she sleeps in her parents suburban basement and slices meat in a grocery store deli. The deli acts as extension of her studio as well as a tool to reduce the gap between artists and non-artists alike. How do we embrace our differences and share our sameness? Utilizing the job skills required, she investigates the tension between consumer and viewer, performer and employee, studio and gallery.

--

Ella Weber received a BFA in printmaking from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln and an MFA with distinction from the University of Kansas. Weber has attended residencies at Rogers Art Loft, MWPAI, Ox-Bow School of Art, The Wassaic Project, and Anderson Ranch to name a few. She is the recipient of a 2019 Individual Artist Fellowship from the Nebraska Arts Council. The artist has exhibited widely with most recent solo exhibitions at, Munson Williams Proctor Art Institute, The Union for Contemporary Art, and Rogers Art Gallery. When she is not slicing ham, she teaches at The University of Nebraska–Omaha and mentors high school students through the Joslyn’s Kent Bellows Mentoring program.