CARSON ELLIS // One Week in January

On view September 14-October 19, 2024
Opening reception Saturday, September 14 (2–5pm)

Nationale is pleased to present One Week in January, artist Carson Ellis’ sixth solo show with the gallery. The exhibition, opening September 14 and on view through October 19, will feature 19 selected original paintings from Ellis’ upcoming adult debut, One Week in January: New Paintings for an Old Diary (Chronicle Books).

In January 2001, the then 25-year-old Ellis moved into a warehouse in the Central Eastside with a group of fellow artists. For the first week she lived there, Ellis kept a detailed diary recording only the minutiae of each day, mostly as a brain exercise to stave off what she perceived as memory loss. A couple years ago, having recently rediscovered the volume in a crate of letters and keep-sakes, she set to illustrate the two-decade-old journal with rich gouache paintings, evocatively capturing a specific cultural moment of the early 2000s.

Offering here a snapshot of a bygone era and a meticulous re-creation of quotidian frustrations and small, meaningful moments, One Week in January is a meditation on what it means both to start your journey as an artist and to look back at that beginning many years later.

Carson Ellis lives and works outside of Portland, OR. She wrote and illustrated the books for children Du Iz Tak?, winner of the 2017 Caldecott Honor, the New York Times Bestseller Home, and most recently In The Half Room. She has also illustrated such works as What Is Love? by Mac Barnett, The Shortest Day by Susan Cooper, The Wildwood Chronicles and The Whiz Mob and the Grenadine Kid by Colin Meloy, and The Composer is Dead by Lemony Snicket. She is the recipient of the E. B. White Read-Aloud Award, two Silver Medals awarded by the Society of Illustrators, two Grammy nominations, and the California Young Readers Medal, among other honors. Throughout the past two decades, she has exhibited original artwork at Nationale, KSMoCA, Multnomah County Library, PDX Contemporary Art, The University of Montana Western, Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, R. Michelson Galleries, and Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. She is represented by Nationale and R. Michelson Galleries.

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