On view: February 2017

“Holdraketa” is the name of a Hungarian toy rocket made in the early 1960’s. The box for the toy had a graphic image that is altered and reproduced at billboard-size.The historic use of cartoon-like rocket imagery in road signs is a way to throw into relief current developments in space travel in the region. It also invokes the metaphorical resonance of space travel in an era of planetary distress.

Ellen Babcock draws inspiration from historical landscapes and from a panoply
of materials, often scavenged or re-used, for her sculptures, installations and
public projects. She is an Associate Professor of Sculpture at the University of
New Mexico and the founding director of Friends of the Orphan Signs, an
organization that places collaboratively produced public art in abandoned road
signs. Ellen is co-author of The Zeon Files, recipient of the 2013 Americans for
the Arts Public Art Year in Review award, and creator of the 2016 All Hands On
Banner and Parade project in Portland, Maine. She is a former New Englander
transplanted to the desert decades ago, and is happy to call Albuquerque home.