Ellen Rutt is a Detroit-based interdisciplinary artist who utilizes an abstract lexicon of layered shapes and primary colors in her improvisational and evocative installations. She facilitates conversations between materiality and movement, between place and process. Her site-specific installations, mixed-media paintings, and textiles examine notions of belonging and exclusion that expose a divide between nature and culture in the American experience.

Rutt graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Michigan. She has exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, Detroit Institute of Arts, Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts in Grand Rapids, East Hawaii Cultural Center/Hawaii Museum of Contemporary Art, and pt. 2 Gallery in Los Angeles. She has completed murals and installations in France, New York, San Francisco, Canada, and Hawaii, among other locations around the world. She has been featured in Juxtapoz, Forbes, W, alive, and Loam, and was recently named one of 24 changemakers in 2020 by Hour Detroit Magazine.