Austin Ellwein
visual identity, portfolio site, and book for a contemporary fine artist

Art direction, Identity, Web, Photo, Print
2023

Austin Ellwein is a celebrated fibers artist and textile designer. His works are grounded in mysticism, exploring folk exteriors and infusing them with personal incantations. Each piece of his tells a strange story, and my work for him involves setting a stage that deepens and amplifies those complex messages. I enjoy using expressive and bold typography, a dreamy sky motif, technicolor titles, and surrealist photography.
This project utilizes a maximalist approach, nodding to Ellwein’s artistic style and the recurring folk themes in his body of work. The role of design in this context is not to unify or connect his already distinctive work, but rather to emphasize the myriad of beautiful details that makes each piece its own. This is an ongoing, ever-changing, living and breathing project and collaboration.

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“Sitting with scathing collusions, I can only think about how I’ve been mistreated by my male counterparts. Time and time again – how I’ve been hurt and how I veiled it with a pink wash of love. How in the gay community, I am commodified, and yet I have nobody to belong to. I wish I could just envelope all of my anger and send it to the people who really need to hear it. And much to my chagrin, my anger is a corridor to my tired grief – and it’s something near oppressive. As I take historical fragments and line them with my vigorous embroidery, needles punching through flimsy linen and roving, I conjure up a quiet collection. Meditative statements and superficial paradises that I wish were there for everyone to look at. Tactile wishes and violent dreamscapes for all to touch. I want them all to see but I need one to hold me without killing me; Because on top of being gay, I am scared.”

www.austinellwein.com
www.austinellwein.party