User talk:Eforart

Ellen Frances (legally Ellen Frances Courtney), is an American artist residing in New York City who has made major contributions in graphic design for the music industry as well as New York City nightlife.

BACKGROUND
Ellen was born in 1981 in Kansas City, Kansas. At the age of four she was enrolled in ballet classes at a local ballet school. By the age of twelve Ellen was training privately with Bonnie Mathis, the director of Boston Ballet II and Marjory Thomson of Pacific Northwest Ballet. Ellen was accepted with scholarship during an audition at the Orpheum Theater in Minnesota to train at The Royal Winnipeg Ballet. After completing training under the internationally recognised teacher and coach Galina Yordanova. Upon returning to Minnesota she was given a roll in the touring cast of the Joffrey's Nutcracker. It was during this time that Ellen was accepted to The Pacific Northwest Ballet in Seattle to train and perform. She was later one of thrity accepted to train in the Russian influenced bording school for dancers in Florida at the Harid Conservatory. That summer she also was giving a chorus roll alongside the Joffrey II in the touring Brodayway production of Cinderella with Phyllis Diller. After leaving the Harid Conservatory due to complications with an eating disorder she performed for two seasons with the Kansas City Ballet.

GRAPHIC DESIGN AND THE FINE ARTS
During rehabilitation; after being admitted to the ER in Kansas with heart complications related to amphetamine use, she began to work in watercolors with no prior training. In 2001 she submitted slides of her paintings, both acrylic and watercolor, and was accepted to the Minneapolis College of Art and Design on scholarship. After changing her major from fine art to graphic design she was accepted to the Parsons School for Design in New York City.As a Junior at Parsons she was taken in by Ryan Mcginness. It was here where Ellen refined her use of vector illustration. She also worked for Ryan to prep his show for Paris in 2004. After a brief internship at SPIN Magazine; where Ellen's original illustrations were featured in a Pixies cover story, she went on to work for VH1 on the revival of The Patridge Family. She was later taken under the wing of Mad Anthony at DKNY and made the Senior Graphic Designer of the mens wear line in 2004. From there she went on to design for WMG, [www.atlanticrecords.com Atlantic Records] and Lava. During this time she worked on Albums for Missy Elliot, the layout of the US verion for Bloc Party and logo branding for Pretty Ricky amongst others. After being added on to the staff at Fuse, she worked on the 2005 Warped Tour and was later made the Head of Print and Senior Designer for Fuse promos and marketing. During this time she also worked on a specialty snowboard for Monument, album packaging for The New Pornographers and had three fine art group showings of her illustrative large scale paintings in NYC.

NEW YORK CITY NIGHTLIFE
Ellen entered into the nightlife in 2005 after befriending a promoter for VICE Australia. After this she went on to DJ at clubs such as The Annex, Hiro Ballroom, Darkroom, Studio B, Lit, Bed, and Movida amungst others. While being booked by famed promoter Alex English, she was a DJ alongside celebrities like Carlos D and Paul Banks of Interpol, members of Bloc Party, The Misshapes, The Ruff Kids, The Films, Stretch Armstrong, TV on the Radio, and more. She also was the guest DJ for the release of the Edie Sedgwick book - Girl On Fire party and Paper Magazines Most Beautiful People party of 2006 with Amanda Lepore. After meeting famed DJ Lauren Flax she went on a west coast tour of nightlife hot spots. Once returning to NYC she was the guest DJ at the last Ruff Kids party at The Ruff Club and officially resigned from regular nightlife appearances due to a problem with alcohol dependency.

Ellen currently works as a freelance graphic designer, the head of print for Fuse TV, and makes guest appearances in New York City clubs as a DJ.

http://www.vectorluv.com