Ellen Babcock is an artist, educator, and the founder of Friends of the Orphan Signs. Based in Albuquerque, NM, she draws inspiration from landscapes and from a panoply of materials, often scavenged or re-used. Her work has been exhibited at numerous venues including Center for Contemporary Arts (Santa Fe, NM); SCA Contemporary Arts (Albuquerque, NM); the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery; Southern Exposure; the Headlands Center for the Arts; and the Exploratorium (San Francisco, CA).
Friends of the Orphan Signs (FOS) is an organization that sites collaboratively-produced public art in abandoned signage. Since 2009, FOS has created numerous public artworks and events, and has received funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, the McCune Foundation and the Black Rock Arts Foundation among others. The FOS project, Revivir, a neon sign/artwork completed in 2012, received the Americans for the Arts Outstanding Public Art Project award.
Ellen has an MFA from California College of the Arts and is an Associate Professor of Sculpture at the University of New Mexico where she has taught since 2009.