Elena K. Abbott, PhD, is an award-winning fine arts collage and mixed-media artist, a historian of the American anti-slavery movement, and a publishing professional based in Washington State.
MEET ELENA
Elena believes in the power of creative energy, lifelong learning, and compelling stories.
It all started, as things do, when she was a kid growing up in the mountains of Colorado. When she wasn’t reading everything she could get her hands on, she was writing. She scribbled away on any piece of paper she could find, creating fantastical worlds and writing terrible poetry.
At some point she switched gears, splitting her time between writing epic fantasy and hardboiled(-ish) mysteries. And then she discovered history. Historical stories, in all their forms, became a passion that carried her through a doctorate in history from Georgetown University.
And through it all, she spent as much time as possible in the great outdoors, losing and re-finding herself high in the mountains, deep in the forests, and along every coast. She has always been intrigued by the dynamic and often contradictory ways she feels when immersed in nature: small, peaceful, ignited, mysterious, beautiful, insignificant, powerful, embodied, afraid, emboldened, alive. This deep connection eventually became the foundation and inspiration for her artistic practice.
Today, Elena is based in the Pacific Northwest. When she's not in her office or studio, she can usually be found adventuring outside or snuggling up to her feline fur-baby, Thistle.
ARTIST STATEMENT
“My practice is based on exploring the rich textures and colors of the natural world and discovering surprising relationships in the visual language of paper that has outlasted its original purpose. I begin by collecting, curating, and repurposing paper for each piece, thumbing through the detritus of old magazines, catalogs, and calendars that collectively speak to our fleeting day-to-day interests, the changes our world has undergone over the last several decades, and the devastating amount of single-use paper we waste every day. Using a chaotic and playful technique of placing and pasting randomly cut geometric shapes, I meticulously transform colors, textures, and patterns into striking natural landscapes and finely rendered flora and fauna. Bringing a rigorous fine arts ethos to my collage practice, I use only the highest-quality finishes and framing to ensure that the resources I’ve repurposed will stand the test of time.”
HISTORIAN, AUTHOR, PUBLISHING PROFESSIONAL
Elena is a historian with expertise in slavery, abolitionism, and emancipation in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Atlantic World. She is the author Beacons of Liberty: International Free Soil and the Fight for Racial Justice in Antebellum America (Cambridge University Press, 2021).
She is also the founder of Ink Blotter, where she works with scholars, authors, and other professionals to develop and hone their book projects and writing craft.