Wendy Ellertson

Like that of many artists, Wendy’s work defies easy categorization.   She describes herself as a visual storyteller who is inspired by real and mythic creatures, by finding rocks in her travels that ask to be a head or snout, by dreams, and by wisps of story magic that fly into her studio.  She believes our responsibility as artists is to keep the creative energy in the world swirling. Born in San Francisco, Wendy grew up in the Bay Area, Chicago, and Cleveland.  She holds degrees from Stanford University and Boston College, and studied at the Cleveland Art Institute. She has been an active member of the United States fine craft community for over 50 years, exhibiting at major fine craft shows across the country and in numerous galleries and museum shows. She started as a potter, then shifted to art dolls. For the past thirty years, she has focused on the creative possibilities of leather, including a decade in the fashion world, during which she designed and made pierced leather garments and accessories. Her focus at this stage in her life is creating one-of-a-kind sculptural leather creatures and objects which encourage perspective, creativity, listening to each other's stories, and an appreciation of life as an adventure to be savored. Her home and studio are in Roxbury, MA, where she is an enthusiastic supporter of the local art community and celebrates storytelling in all its forms.