Kristin's profile
Kristin Putchinski explores concepts of tension, transformation, and release through a series of actions, performances, and sculptures that utilize an upright piano as the primary object. Her process is tri-fold: unmaking, playing, and remaking. This body of work confronts her conventional training on the piano and articulates experiences on her journey of healing from profound encounters with violent trauma. Putchinski spent twenty-seven years touring as an award-winning songwriter, musician, and composer before completing an MFA in Intermedia and Digital Arts from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County in 2024.
Bio from Kristen Hileman, curator, from The Kreeger Museum catalog (2024):
Kristin Putchinski subverts our expectations for encountering a piano, particularly in the galleries of a museum such as the Kreeger, which was designed to showcase not only visual art but its founders’ passion for music. In "Reaping & Sowing," a destroyed piano acts as a landscape across which Putchinski juxtaposes her gestures of “planting” loose keys within the instrument’s exposed strings to her opposing action of plucking the keys and letting them fall into disorder. The piece runs on a 12 minute 30 second loop, yielding a never-ending cycle of seeding and harvest, and growth and decay.
Putchinski’s work reflects on her experiences as a musical artist performing under the name ellen cherry. Over the last several years, she has left the music industry and refocused on visual arts, starting a new cycle in her career, but one still influenced by her past. At the same time, the biblical title of the piece clues us into the way that Putchinski’s performance offers an encompassing metaphor. Reaping & Sowing might prompt us to account for our actions both individually and globally, as we figure out ways to sustain our existence in the face of geo-political tumult, as well as environmental and technological change.
Bio for ellen cherry (years active: 1996-2023)
Emmy-nominated ellen cherry (lowercase letters intentional!) is the performing moniker of Kristin Putchinski, an award winning song and story alchemist, musician and performer, based in Baltimore, MD. Mixing equal parts of pathos and humor throughout her songs, ellen cherry’s banter gives audiences a peek into a whimsical, curious mind. A recent project was a touring program (2016-2018) called Portraits in Song that showcased her love of storytelling and her passion for history and women’s equality. After a devastating car wreck caused by an intoxicated driver in 2013, cherry was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and has spent years fostering recovery and resilience, her own and others, through performance, music, and storytelling. She is in production on a new work, Recovering Eurydice, that explores the process of recovery through myth making, storytelling and song using multiple artistic disciplines. More information about ellen can be found at www.ellencherry.com
