Event Details
Ellen Ball returns to J. Mackey Gallery after her sold-out show in 2024, with Sailing to Byzantium, a new solo exhibition in East Hampton. Ball's work explores the ways women construct and perform an identity through beauty, adornment, and self-expression. She is interested in how clothing, jewelry, and ritual become both personal armor and cultural language. Her contemporary figures draw on the visual traditions of Byzantine icons and Renaissance portraiture, existing somewhere between portrait, relic, and icon. The exhibition takes its inspiration from W.B. Yeats' celebrated poem Sailing to Byzantium, particularly its meditation on the desire to transcend mortality by becoming something crafted, gilded, and enduring.
Ellen Ball began her artistic career in New York City while living in downtown New York and later Brooklyn. She went on to be inspired by the city, its many industries, cultures, and energy itself. Ball's background as a graphic designer and illustrator for the beauty industry influences her work, evident in her choices of imagery and application. While pursuing her BFA from Denison University, she attended Studio Arts Centers International in Florence, Italy. After graduating, she went on to study graphic design at Parsons School of Design and painting at the New York Studio School with Graham Nickson. Throughout her artistic career, Ball has collaborated with influential artists and photographers. In 2024, her solo summer show "Beyond Your Glittering Eyes" at J. Mackey Gallery featured a collaboration with legendary rock photographer Mick Rock. Ball has presented several solo exhibitions in New York City, including with LOOC Art on the Lower East Side. Her work has also been featured in numerous group exhibitions throughout New York City and the East End of Long Island, including the 2026 Women in Art exhibition at the New York Stock Exchange. Her work can be found among international private collections and those of prominent figures.
J. Mackey Gallery represents established as well as emerging artists with an emphasis on the rich artistic history of Long Island. Highlighting artists from Brooklyn to Montauk, the gallery features celebrated Long Island artists including Phyllis Baker Hammond, Eliza Geddes, Arthur Pinajian, Ellen Ball, and Chris Kelly. Through a series of exhibits and lectures, the gallery explores the artistic process and cultural context of contemporary works examining 20th and 21st-century painting, drawing, mixed media, sculpture, and photography.
Opening Reception: Thursday, August 6th, 6-8 PM