Meet Ella Barnes

Two truths and a lie

Answers at bottom of the article.

I am really good at telling classic jokes.

I make myself laugh more than anyone else can.

I am the funniest person in my family.

alignment, cyanotype on arches watercolor paper, 10"x14", 2020

Would you rather

be able to smell the future or hear into the past? Please explain why.

Naturally, I’d want to smell the future because I wouldn’t want to live life stuck looking backward… I also plan on eating and cooking lots of good food in the future so I guess I could look forward to it.

inhale, cyanotype on arches watercolor paper, 9"x12", 2020_

Some questions with Ella Barnes

Who has been your biggest support throughout your creative career?

My family nurtured my affinity for all things art from an early age. They created the space for me to be this uncontrollable wild child who was only good at

making art and causing trouble. To this day, I am most excited to give my favorite new pieces to my family first. Their collective belief in my ability to be an artist has been the guiding force behind my own dedication to being creative in my life.

pale pressing moon, cyanotype on arches watercolor paper, 10"x14", 2020

What techniques do you use to create your geometric compositions.?

I started out as a painter then went to school for photography and ended up somewhere in-between the two mediums. I use a method called the cyanotype process to make UV-developed prints on paper and textile in shades of blue. Cyanotype is an alternative photography method that does not require a camera. I use a combination of materials like vellum, tracing, and opaque papers (as well as drawing and painting) to make ‘negatives’ for cyanotype prints. The geometric compositions are abstractions of ideas and feelings that I extract from drawings in my notebook of shapes and thoughts. Working in abstraction allows me to keep the concept fluid, which is sometimes the only way to visually represent something as slippery as the feeling of being lost.

Your recent pieces incorporate a lot of blues and white. What was the inspiration behind this color palette?

Cyanotypes, as the name suggests, produce only blue-toned prints. While I enjoy using this medium because I find it to be the perfect combination of drawing/ painting and analog photography, I have also become fixated on the color blue.

The more I work with it, the more it has opened up to me. In the same way that I can stare at the sky or the ocean, I find that I can endlessly enjoy the color blue

in all its various manifestations. Blue can be deep and still, or floating and almost invisible. I’m nowhere near done exploring this color. Plus, working in a medium where the color palette is preordained allows me to focus almost exclusively on the composition or, more specifically with cyanotypes, the interplay of light and shadow.

soul reflection II, cyanotype on paper, 6"x9", 2021

What kinds of narratives do you gravitate towards in your work?

Each piece I make is like asking a question and recording the reply. I rely on simple geometric and organic shapes to pose the question and then the sun to generate some sort of response and record it. The resulting abstract composition might serve as the reply to the question “what is the shape of an exhale?” I am driven by this need to visualize things that I can only feel or experience or imagine.

What is the all-time best toy from your childhood? Why?

My favorite ‘toy’ would have been dirt. I spent hours and hours building sprawling fairy houses out of it as a kid. The magic was so real.

soul reflection, 9"x6", cyanotype on arches watercolor paper, 2020

How do you stay connected to nature while living in NYC?

I work closely with Elizabeth Street Garden, the non-profit / community garden in Little Italy. My partner Joseph Reiver runs the organization and oversees the garden while advocating for its continued existence while the city continues to try to develop the lot. I feel connected to nature in a very real way in NYC because I am part of this fight to protect and preserve a small portion of what’s left (more info: elizabethstreetgarden.com). That, and the garden is my favorite place in all of NYC. It is the little green center of my life here. I can and always do turn to nature for answers.

the guide III, cyanotype on paper, 6"x4.5", 2021

What is your favorite part about being an artist in NYC?

My favorite thing is about being an artist here would have to be the feeling that any weird little material or tool or chemical I can possibly need is definitely somewhere available in a borough near me. That and the other creatives here. They are my family. Their endless flow of creative energy is so undeniably real and inspiring.

the well, cyanotype on paper, 6"x9", 2021

Any final comments? (This is your electronic soapbox for one last answer.)

Making art for me is combined therapy and meditation. It’s traveling inwards and returning to the surface with artifacts. It is my only means of meaningful survival. This is me telling you to go make something. Art-making is the ultimate balm of life.

Two truths and a lie answer key:

Lie: I am really good at telling classic jokes.

Truth: I make myself laugh more than anyone else can.

Truth: I am the funniest person in my family.

Ella Barnes