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RIP Mary Ellen Croteau


I was shocked to learn last week of the death of Chicago artist Mary Ellen Croteau. For the last decade, she worked with recycled plastics to create sculptures and sculptural portraits that combined an ingenious use of found elements with a natural sense of colour and design. In fact, something I wrote about one of her earliest pieces in this style, Brancusi in Plastic, is still the most popular post on this blog.

Mary Ellen also ran a small gallery on the west side of Chicago, Art on Armitage, which I showed at in 2007 and 2012. The gallery space was just a shopfront window facing a busy street in a predominantly working-class and Latino neighbourhood. The art was usually experimental, and Mary Ellen received deserved credit for connecting art to a so-called underserved population, and for running the gallery for so long and for such little personal gain.

I also spent a lot of time with Mary Ellen when I accompanied her to the Bridge Art Fair, a branch of Art Basel Miami, and found her just to be a very nice and very funny person.

She was not by any means advanced in years, so her death is a deep loss above all for her family, but also for a Chicago art community that will be poorer for her absence.
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