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.

CasaAgua (2021-25)

Casa Agua is an experimental xeric laboratory, a water conservation demonstration site with Xeric Garden, Art pop-up, Cactus Lab, and Gathering Ground for public events large and small. Founded by artists Frances Whitehead and Jim Elniski, along with a loose collective of erratic creatives and provocateurs, Casa Agua operates under the reciprocity and generosity paradigm. Opening its doors for short term events and interventions, Casa Agua aims to galvanize conversation about important issues for the Southwest.

Water Rhythms (2025)

                                                                        Water Rhythms

The inaugural WaterWorks project at Casa Agua in Santa Fe, NM, casaagua.org , "Water Rhythms" is a new audio work composed of recordings of rainwater running through the canales and downspouts on site. Engaging the acoustics of the cylindrical chamber of the pop-up artspace known as "The Tank", a repurposed galvanized water tank, this soundscape reflects the artist's interest in how we contact, shape, and are shaped by the world around us. 

Springs (2011)

Springs, created in conjunction with the Telluride Institute for the San Miguel Watershed Exhibition, explore the natural springs of the San Miguel Watershed as “local beginnings.” Water is regarded as a medium of connectivity.  Samples of water were collected from each of 25 springs found throughout the San Miguel Watershed. In the future, water from other springs will be added to this collection.

Conversations with residents about the locations of the springs are held throughout the region, creating a transcribed record of the place of water in their lives. The location of each spring is documented online (interactive watershed) with GPS, photographs and video.

Emanation (2009)

Over the course of four weeks, 250 Hanoi residents captured their “breath” by blowing- up balloons. The balloons were used to construct a column for an installation at Nha San Studio. The participants are members of various community groups in Hanoi including: Action for the City, Nha San Studio artists, and the people who live and work in the Thuy Khue district of Hanoi near the Studio.

The balloon-breath column echoes the structural stilts of the Nha San Studio building, an example of the vernacular architectural form, nha san, (house on stilts), in which Emanation was installed.

Leaving Your Impression: Finding Common Ground (2007)

Together with the affordable housing community residents of Terracina Gold Apartments, Sacramento, CA, I made inked prints of one of their fingers. The fingerprint was used as an image signifying something that everyone in the community had in common. I made enlarged laser-cut stencils of their fingerprints. The residents then stenciled their prints with fluorescent paint to represent this community’s ‘collective fingerprint’. This project was sponsored by LifeSTEPS, a provider of social services for affordable housing communities in California.

The court site, adjacent to the small community center, was originally built as a small basketball court to be used by the residents. In 2004, the property management became concerned that, as a basketball court, it was attracting what they identified as youth gang-related activity. Before discussing their concerns with the Terracina residents, the management removed the basketball pole. When I began working with the residents on possible community-based art projects, they expressed feeling both demoralized and disenfranchised in part by this unilateral ‘decommissioning’. They reported that they did not use this space other than for events annually staged by the property management.