At The Rust Belt: Brooke Ellis

The offers a unique experience for patrons as well as vendors. The new art market is host to more than 60 artists every weekend. Each week, Ferndale Patch will feature one artist and get a closer view of what the heck they do.

Ferndale Patch: Who are you and what do you do?

Brooke Whitney Ellis: My name is Brooke Whitney Ellis, I'm 21 and in my senior year at University of Detroit Mercy working toward a master’s in architecture. Besides being a full-time student, I also work at several tennis clubs.

Over the past year or so, I have become very involved in the art scene with my abstract acrylic paintings. I've been doing art all my life, but I dove into acrylic painting after graduating from high school. After so much focus on realistic imagery in high school, combined with a hectic schedule, I had an immense need to find a way to vent and that's when I fell in love with abstract painting. It was an outlet of expression and the best part was it wasn't graded; there was no wrong way to do it. Ironically, my best most popular work all happened after the art classes ended.

Ferndale Patch: How did you get your start?

Ellis: I've been painting for three years and selling for the past two years. It started as a recreational form of stress relief after I graduated from high school. Suddenly, I had requests for purchases and custom orders through Facebook. Things took off from there.

After many custom orders from friends and their other friends and their family, I realized I could make this into a more substantial form of income if I got the word out about my work. So after a year of custom and original paintings, all sold through Facebook, I dove into outdoor fine art shows.

My collection of smaller scale work with the incorporation of inspiring, entertaining and famous quotes became a big hit at the booth shows. I was registered for three shows for the summer and at each show -- I was invited to more. I just completed my ninth art show.

The quotation idea came about from the inkling that the painting was so pleasing, but didn't seem quite finished. In the fear of tainting the simple beauty already present, I decided to go for a contrast of media and technique-handwriting. It was a hobby through my high school career to read through and collect quotes. I think of each of them as quotes suitable to live by and it's rewarding to see the positive reaction of customers when they experience my collection.

Ferndale Patch: What inspires you?

Ellis: I love breaking the rules in my paintings. There is no such thing as a mistake on my canvas. If the paint drips, I react to that texture. If the paint splashes I continue the pattern suddenly created. My largest form of inspiration is an unexpected moment on a painting. It's something to challenge a critical and technical mind and it's enjoyable turning something that some would say ruins their perfect painting into an elegant detail.

Ferndale Patch: What is it about the Rust Belt that attracted you to it?

Ellis: I love vintage and being surrounded by a collection of artistic talent that I would have never met otherwise. I learned very quickly that the Rust Belt is a warm and welcoming community, with great ideas and growing potential and was very pleased to be accepted into the mix.  I love that it's local to the community that I'm already involved in. Over the past several months, I've been working on becoming more intertwined in the Ferndale and Detroit community to not only educate myself for a future masters project, but to find ways to strengthen an area that has so much pride but a hurting economy.

Ferndale Patch: Tell us one thing about your work that would surprise us.

Ellis: My high school art teacher, my final day of high school, told me to give up on art. His class had a large focus on human faces and it was my weakness. It was a fantastic feeling for me this past year when I donated paintings to my high school's fundraiser and my paintings raised approximately $800 for the charity.

Brooke Ellis will be at the market on Saturday. She is working on an Etsy account, due to open in the winter. Ellis does a wide range of custom work. Feel free to e-mail her with a description of your idea: brookewellis@aol.com. You can also visit her website: www.wix.com/brookewellis/designs.