Ellen Fullman: Sculpture and Music

I’ve been listening to Ellen Fullman’s work since I read a NYT profile about her last year, after she was named a Guggenheim fellow. Her creation, the Long String Instrument, is both installation and working musical instrument. For each concert, Fullman installs anchors from which she stretches brass strings, each more than 50 feet long, that create droning, reverberating sounds as the artist moves her rosined hands (or wooden bows, rubber bands, etc.) along their length. Fullman, originally from Memphis, first began incorporating sound into her performances as an undergraduate at the Kansas City Art Institute, and has been installing and playing her Long String Instrument and collaborating with other artists since the early 1980s.

An in-person concert has been likened to listening from inside a giant musical instrument. For now, the best I can do is listen online. The album Harbors, below, is a collaboration between Fullman and cellist Theresa Wong.