Chicago-based visual artist Ella Garnes works across drawing, painting, photography, collage, and sculptural installation to explore memory, family, and emotional inheritance. A 2026 graduate of Columbia College Chicago in Set Design and Construction, her practice is informed by the language of built environments, cinematic storytelling, and material experimentation.

In her work, photographs become fragments, surfaces hold histories, and constructed forms blur the boundary between object and environment. Moving fluidly between image-making and fabrication, Ella creates layered worlds that feel at once intimate and imagined. Spaces where memory shifts, grief softens, and connection takes shape.

Her debut solo exhibition, Parallax, brings together drawings, paintings, photography, collage, and museum-style built elements in an immersive meditation on remembrance, identity, and becoming. Rooted in personal history while open to interpretation, the exhibition considers the ways we carry those who shape us and how memory continues to evolve across time.