About
un-tethered.net is a digital sketchbook, portfolio, and news site for my creative practice. On a typical day, I use digital technologies to design and animate monstrous morphologies. The network of subjects that contextualize my work includes natural history, collections and museums, bestiaries, zoology, teratology, mutation, adaptation, variation, hybrids, speciation, bio-mechanics, bio-mimicry–you get the idea and a sense for the dizzying swirl of facts and fictions that surround the topic of monsters. The digital design and fabrication technologies I use–3D modeling and animation, simulation and special effects, CNC milling and rapid prototyping–are another hub of topics interwoven with those related to monsters. I am engrossed by the learning, conjuring, and constructing involved in configuring something meaningful out of this seemingly disparate set of interests and will use un-tethered.net as a floating outpost where I consider and document my work.
Elona Van Gent was born in 1961 in the American midwest. She studied literature and music and served as Director of the Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts (Grand Rapids, MI) before receiving an MFA in sculpture from Tyler School of Art, Temple University in 1989. Since then, her practice has gradually expanded to include digitally designed and fabricated sculptures, prints, and animations depicting improbable species of monstrous creatures. Her projects have been shown in exhibitions at the Exploratorium in San Francisco and numerous university galleries and museums in the US., as well as at Peter the Great Museum in Russia, Roda Sten in Sweden, and Sydney’s University of Technology. Elona has lectured and presented her work at museums, art schools, and conferences, across America and Europe and currently teaches in the School of Art & Design at the University of Michigan.