Ellen Woodbury is a one-of-a-kind stone sculptor who carves stylized animals from a variety of colored and white marbles.
Ellen is a Signature member of Artists For Conservation, a Signature member of The Society of Animal Artists, and an Associate member of the National Sculpture Society. Her sculpture is juried into national and international shows. She is an invited exhibitor at Sculpture in the Park, the largest outdoor juried sculpture show in the US. Ellen’s outdoor sculpture “See Through Other Eyes: Spotted Owl” won the 2011 People’s Choice Award in Loveland, CO, as part of the Arts Advocacy Project. Her work has won several national awards and is held in private collections throughout the U.S.
Ellen is now carving a series of stone sculptures of endangered species and has six finished pieces: a spotted owl, a frog, a tiger, a leatherback sea turtle, a red panda, and a St. Andrew Beach Mouse. She has drawings and maquettes for many more sculptures in this series… read more
Ellen Woodbury is a one-of-a-kind stone sculptor who carves stylized animals from a variety of colored and white marbles.
Ellen is a Signature member of Artists For Conservation, a Signature member of The Society of Animal Artists, and an Associate member of the National Sculpture Society. Her sculpture is juried into national and international shows. She is an invited exhibitor at Sculpture in the Park, the largest outdoor juried sculpture show in the US. Ellen’s outdoor sculpture “See Through Other Eyes: Spotted Owl” won the 2011 People’s Choice Award in Loveland, CO, as part of the Arts Advocacy Project. Her work has won several national awards and is held in private collections throughout the U.S.
Ellen is now carving a series of stone sculptures of endangered species and has six finished pieces: a spotted owl, a frog, a tiger, a leatherback sea turtle, a red panda, and a St. Andrew Beach Mouse. She has drawings and maquettes for many more sculptures in this series. Woodbury explains, “I am at a point in my life where I need for my actions and my art to express my values and beliefs. I want to help stop the destruction of our world and to help all living things to survive and thrive.”
Ellen was a Directing Animator and Character Animator at Walt Disney Feature Animation for 20 years and brought to life many well-known characters, including Zazu the bird in “The Lion King,” and Pegasus the flying horse in “Hercules.” She was a significant artist during Disney’s second Golden Age of Animation and animated on all the contemporary classics from “The Little Mermaid,” “Beauty and the Beast,” and “Aladdin” to “Chicken Little.”
Woodbury resigned her position at Disney and moved to Loveland, CO, to pursue a career as an independent sculptor, working primarily in stone. She sculpts with both hand tools and power tools and finds the process of carving exhilarating. Ellen exclaims, “Sculpting in stone is like walking a fine line between creation and destruction—one false move with a tool and you could suddenly have two stones!” Woodbury was well-known in the Animation Industry for her ability to animate animals, and loves carving animals in stone—stylized and with a bit of whimsy.
Ellen grew up in Corning, New York. She attended the College of Visual and Performing Arts at Syracuse University where she earned her BFA in Film and Art. She then went on to California Institute of the Arts where she earned her MFA in Experimental Animation. Her student films won national and international awards, which led to a long career as a Disney Animator. Ellen applies many animation principles to both her design and sculpting processes. She says, “I find stone sculpture to be a logical extension for much of what I learned as an animator. One medium is the illusion of three dimensions and the other is the reality of three dimensions.” —natureartists.com
