Spellerberg Projects

Gallery hours
Saturday, March 15, 11am-3pm
Saturday, March 22, 11am-3pm
Saturday, March 29, 11am-3pm
Saturday, March 30, 11am-3pm
Friday, April 4, 6–9pm – First Friday
Saturday, April 5, 11am-9pm

Artist’s Reception
Saturday, April 5, 6–9pm

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About the Artist

Elee Torres is an artist from México currently living in Fairfield, Iowa. Elee received an MFA from Maharishi International University (M.I.U.) in Fairfield in 2024 and received a BFA in Painting from M.I.U. in 2013.

In 2001 through 2003, after immigrating to the U.S., Elee received a yearly scholarship from the ArtReach Program at the Indianapolis Art Center in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Elee has participated in group exhibitions, including the MFA Thesis Exhibition 2024 at M.I.U., the annual Ecojam Fashion Show from 2013 through 2016 in Fairfield Iowa, and BFA Thesis Show 2013 at Maharishi International University.

In addition to his studio work Elee has collaborated with various artists and organizations in Fairfield Iowa putting on dance and stage performances Including, Passion Dance Studio, Judy Bales: Words Collide 2012, Fairfield Art of Dance, FEIST Club Burlesque, Bubble Boys Burlesque.

Artist’s Statement

I move through my days making. I make clothes, food, furniture, jewelry, and I grow flowers to prepare for the changing of the seasons and for personally significant dates and holidays. Cycles of time are intimately woven through my labor.

Growing up in a large-small-town in rural México, this was how most things happened, they had to be made. In everything from day-to-day basic needs to the yearly and once in a lifetime events there was certain degree of labor: preparing, nurturing, maintaining, repairing, improving, and the act of performing the rituals. Now, making has become a weird luxury of time and resources, and not a practical living approach at all.

This attitude towards life with its dynamics and implications are present in my artwork through the act of arranging. Arranging serves as a kind of sketching practice that allows me to identify formal and conceptual relationships. I like to think about the human impulse to transform our living spaces even though it may very well detract from functionality. I put together found and upcycled objects and materials, and imagery sourced from memory to create still-life like sculptural objects suggesting domestic interiors and garden spaces. Setting up these conditions allows me to discover unintended narratives which I can further develop and refine through the application of craft and decoration techniques, and color. I favor discarded materials such as used bricks, broken pots, fallen tree branches, and repurposed wood, and enjoy treating them with great importance. I like to think about and acknowledge the function and importance these materials once had and how to honor them once again anew.

Subverting the ‘normal’ roles of objects and materials speaks to my playful nature and allows me to express my own identity. Having immigrated to the USA in my early teens, and at current living in the American Midwest, thoughts of home, belonging and identity are ever present in my life. My mind has become a fusing of various cultural practical and aesthetic impressions derived from living experience but also from my consumption of entertainment media such as ecology and anthropology documentaries, classic Japanese and Mexican cinema, traditional world dance and music, and anime. I think this to also be the case for most people now a day as the world has become increasingly migratory and more readily connected, and perhaps even more so for the anime subculture. In anime, many worlds exist where many cultural aspects from across the globe and across time can exist. East and West, traditional and futuristic, the actual and the invented can blend to various degrees without being questioned. I think this seemingly romantic approach to combining various elements is what attracts me to it. I also think my work tries to accomplish this. Much like in still-life paintings where the array of what is depicted could bear some deep significance or could equally have been added in on the whim of the artist. Everything seems casual and yet is treated with great importance. I like the mystery, absurdity, drama, and humor of this contradiction. In my work all of these considerations result in a mental and emotional exercise which lets me identify what I find valuable in life.