Vessel

Before settling into a career as a wood turner, Ellsworth studied architecture, created sculpture in metal, and experimented with fibers. His love for the vessel form became evident when he began working with clay, and he then returned to wood, a medium to which he had been introduced as a teenager. Ellsworth sees himself as an artist, a teacher, and a student; he strives to remain open to the wide variety of influences he encounters. Ellsworth is well recognized in the wood art field for the special tools he developed in the 1970s that allowed him to hollow a form out through a very small opening, a process he calls blind turning. As a result, his works exhibit an almost complete roundness of form, as opposed to the openness of vessels by the Moulthrops and others.