Drawing on her experiences growing up in the suburbs of Los Angeles, Erin Eleniak deconstructs the mythologies that make up the character of the Western landscape.

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Eleniak's work seeks out temporal collisions between the ephemeral and geologic, considering once-treasured objects and abjected materials and their roles in place- and memory-making. With a background in ceramics, her interdisciplinary practice involves work with a range of media including clay, ceramic, found objects, photography, drawing, video, and installation. By mining various repositories for cultural dumping, Eleniak’s work troubles our relationships to nostalgia, place, and the cultural mythologies that shape our world view.

 

In 2022, Erin Eleniak earned a Master of Fine Arts from University of Southern California's Roski School of Art and Design. She earned her Bachelor of Arts degree from California State University, Northridge in 2018, followed by a Master of Arts degree from the same institution in 2020. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Bernice Haber Award for Ceramics (2018), the Valerie & Stephen Svec 3D/Ceramics Scholarship (2019), and the Art Alumni Association Award for Outstanding Achievement by a Female Artist (2020). Eleniak is a current faculty member at CSUN where she teaches ceramics, in addition to her role as ceramics studio technician and Loyola Marymount University.

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Eleniak has installed three solo exhibitions, Journey to the End of the Cul-de-Sac (2022), Souvenir (2020), and Archive, Current (2019). Recent group exhibitions include In Cahoots: Artists and Curators at USC Roski, at UTA Artist Space, Beverly Hills, CA (2020) and the California State University, Northridge Graduate Exhibition 2020, online at yngspc.com. She took part in Blinky the Friendly Hen: 40th Anniversary, a 2019 Jeffrey Vallance retrospective and co-exhibition. In her leadership role as CSUN Ceramics Guild president, she also curated an exhibition of student work for Curiosities + Investigations.