Artist Larry Ellingson’s color wheel is three-dimensional and filled with “stuff,” including lawn sprinklers, buttons, rusty hinges, weathered wood, pool balls, tire pumps, old toys and “whatchamacallits,” you know, those things you absentmindedly slide into the junk drawer or flick off the counter for the cat to swat across the kitchen floor. Simple banalities or once useful items, they become something entirely different when Ellingson is done with them. “I look at all that stuff as if trying to reunite long-lost relatives, thinking about how these abandoned nieces, cousins, uncles and grandmothers of junk could all come together in an unfamiliar way to tell a different story; a story interesting enough to make you want to keep looking at it,” he said. Ellingson, 63, took an art class in junior high where a teacher looked at his work and suggested he give up on art so Ellingson did. He graduated from North Central High School and then took some classes at Spokane Falls Community College including Drawing 101, where, using charcoal to recreate a still-life of white objects, Ellingson’s creativity was sparked but didn’t catch. He went on to open a silk screen printing shop and then started working at his father’s audio visual company. Ellingson bought the company in 1986. In December 2010, he retired.
