Jim Elniski Bio

 Jim Elniski is an artist and clinical social worker who works as both creator and catalyst.  His community-based art projects, in conjunction with various human-service organizations, educational sites and neighborhood associations, explore the dynamic interplay of the aesthetic experience, human behavior, and the social and natural environment. These projects typically develop over time and involve various gathering activities.  These activities, in turn, become the contact points for dialogue and interpersonal exchange, which are integral to the work and provide an opportunity for re-examination of the relationship of the physical and social environment.

Employing a trans-disciplinary approach, linking individual and collective expressions of the human ecology, his special interest as an artist, educator, therapist, and clinical consultant is how we contact, shape, and are shaped by the world around us. 

Elniski lives and works in Santa Fe, NM. He is Professor Emeritus of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.  He holds an MFA in Multimedia from the University of Iowa and an MSW from the University of Illinois, Chicago. His individual work and collaborative projects have been exhibited nationally and internationally. Elniski is also a licensed clinical social worker, maintains a relational somatic psychotherapy practice, and is a certification trainer for the Southern California Institute for Bioenergetic Analysis.

In-Action

 

In-Action was a billboard project that I did in Chicago's West Loop.It was visible from the street and the elevated commuter train.

The text on the billboards described actions I observed passengers taking on the train during rush hour. The text in the background listed a range of emotional states that I imagined the could have motivated the passenger to do what I observed them doing. I recognized that as I was doing this six week process, I was using 'interpretation' to give me a sense of being in control of the uncertain and unpredictable ways people around me were acting and reacting (and the way interpretation can compound itself until all you have is 'noise'). The last billboard turned my observations back on myself, publicly acknowledging, "I will never know".