WHERE ART INSPIRES CONNECTION
In TINT’s ALCOVE
Poetic Hope
March 14 - May 3, 2026
Installation by
ELLA NOE
ARTIST STATEMENT
Poetic Hope
Site Specific Installation
Ella (אלה): traditional Hebrew: an oak tree under which the wise used to rest.
“Large leafless trees with their powerful twisted limbs left such a deep impression in her that working towards understanding and reproducing that experience has given meaning to her world.” – Ella Noe
Tree collages came into being as the pandemic hit. Living in the center of a shut down, boarded-up city, I started tearing up paper and collaging it as a necessity to create beauty and ground myself in the midst of chaos.
In tearing up materials (books and booklets) carrying information and messages, repurposing, collaging them, looking for relationships of forms and color, unintentionally, yet significantly, I create messages which resonate with the viewer.
In the midst of chaos, I search for some lightness/feeling of hope. The Alcove’s essence, its skylight calls for translucency as substrate inviting light to play its part.
Inspired by the theme and the site, intermingling words, I extract, from run down art books/creative writing/ education texts, as well as those whose topics relate to affecting our land.
ELLA NOE
Named after her maternal grandmother, Ella Noe (she/her) is a Latinx eastern european jewish visual artist based in San Francisco. Born to Romanian parents, she was raised all over South America and after moving from country to country her first half of her life, landed in San Francisco in 2003 and made it her home.
Ella has been involved with art her whole life, either as an artist, art teacher or working and volunteering for art and human rights organizations. Noe first connected to the art world through dance, storytelling, acting and poetry, and later, through the visual arts (painting, drawing, photography, and collaging).
Noe received her B.A in Advertising Executive in Creative Arts, from the Universidad del Pacifico, Santiago, Chile. In 2005, she received her MFA in Fine Art Photography from the Academy of Art University, San Francisco. She later joined the San Francisco Studio School -- a nonprofit arts organization dedicated to the further understanding of the visual art language and practices -- as an artist, teaching assistant, and studio and gallery manager. Noe has worked as a photography and art teacher for organizations such as MOCHA (museum of children's art), MCCLA (mission cultural center for Latinx Arts in San Francisco), Mission Graduates, and the Red Poppy Art House (where she has also been an artist in residence). She has exhibited in group and solo shows, including twice at the DeYoung Open.