The Material Out of Which Countries are Made

Traffic Zone Gallery presents The Material Out of Which Countries Are Made, an exhibition of photographs by Ellie Kingsbury. The prairie is not the easiest thing to love; the sublime of it is one of patience and looking. It can feel impossible to depict, for the prairie refuses to be framed in. Ellie Kingsbury, a life-long Midwesterner, has captured the spirit of land and sky in her photographs. They lean into each other, each creating the horizon of the other. Vastness of space gives way to feelings of motion, the vital essence of being everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

Artist Biography
Ellie Kingsbury has used photography as her principle art form for the past 40 years, and has recently incorporated mixed media into her projects. Her ideas have always been rooted in the beauty and life force found in ordinary places and beings. Ellie received a McKnight Fellowship for her project “Automatic Beyond Belief”, a story of Industrial Design Age kitchen appliances. She is also a twice recipient of the Artist Initiative grant through the Minnesota State Arts Board. She has shown both nationally and internationally, including group shows in Beijing, Helsinki, San Francisco, Philadelphia, and Portland OR. She has been included in many group shows in Minneapolis area galleries, including the Katherine Nash Gallery, the Catherine G. Murphy Gallery, the Phipps, and the Bloomington Arts Center. She has had solo shows at the Vine Arts Center in 2016 and Form + Content Gallery in 2018.

Image Credit: Ellie Kingsbury, South Dakota, photograph