Mary Ellen Carroll

“…It takes a long time, years, to figure out for oneself what actually unites the work and what you’re doing. On some level, the point of knowing is that you can know when it’s time to change it.
I think that initially you begin your practice as an artist somewhat intuitively. Then, when you produce more work and are faced with the question, What will I do next?--when you take up the self-conscious act of repetition or reinforcement--that’s where cognition comes in. At least with my own practice that’s how it was. And so, early on in my career, as a result of this self-interrogation, I decided to not develop a signature style.
I do have a couple of tenets, however. I approach each idea for an artwork by asking, What is the problem I am trying to solve here? I owe that to having a math and science background. Beyond that, my primary concern is to investigate what a work of art is, and I mean that with reference to Heidegger and his ideas of thingness and being.”
Mary Ellen Carroll, quoted, in conversation with Hamza Walker

MONOGRAPHS & CATALOGS

Mary Ellen Carroll: All The Men Who Think They Can Be Me Essay by Peter Herbstreuth. In this artist's book whose title says it all, Carroll takes the issue of the normative in relation to aesthetics and identification in photography from the universal to the particular--where all
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ONESTAR PRESS
ISBN: 9780964255852
$39.95 | Awaiting stock

Mary Ellen Carroll

At 4 p.m. on June 16, 2007, Mary Ellen Carroll realized the work "In Reverse" at the Fields Sculpture Park in Omi, New York, as part of the exhibiton Nature/Not Nature, curated by Kathleen Triem and Peter Franck. For the commission, Carroll derealized her 2001 work "The Center and the Scoff", in which a car was dropped by a crane into the woods at the Fields so that it would appear as if it had always been there. For "In Reverse", the car was buried at the site from which it was originally lifted. Featured image is "In Reverse," 2007.

Mary Ellen Carroll: All The Men Who Think They Can Be Me

Essay by Peter Herbstreuth.
Published by Onestar Press

In this artist's book whose title says it all, Carroll takes the issue of the normative in relation to aesthetics and identification in photography from the universal to the particular--where all meanings exist subjectively.