Ellen McMahon is an Associate Professor in the School of Art at the University of Arizona. She has an MS in Scientific Illustration from The University of Arizona and an MFA in Visual Art from Vermont College.
McMahon’s work has been exhibited in solo exhibitions Redressing the Mother at AIR Gallery in New York, Maternal Matter at Cal State San Marcos and in numerous group exhibitions. Her artist books are in the collections of UCLA, Scripps College, Occidental College, Texas Tech University, the Center for Creative Photography and The New York and Boston Public Libraries. Her design/art/writing practice is featured in Clean New World: Culture, Politics, and Graphic Design by Maud Lavin. Andrea Liss has written extensively about her work in “Maternal Rites: Feminist Strategies” in the international journal n. paradoxa and in Bodies of Knowledge: Feminist Art and Motherhood forthcoming from Duke University Press.
McMahon’s essays are published in the anthologies, Mother Reader: Essential Writings on Motherhood edited by Moyra Davey and The Oldest We’ve Ever Been: Seven True Stories of Midlife Transitions edited by Maud Lavin. Now that her daughters are older she is returning to her earlier interest in the world outside the family. She is the recent recipient of a 2007 Fulbright Scholars Grant to contribute as a writer, design consultant and visual artist to an interdisciplinary conservation project in Puerto Peñasco, Mexico.