Elena Brescia is an artist and a landscape architect whose work has spanned scales from salt dishes to regional infrastructure.  In professional practice for nearly 30 years, she has balanced project work with pro-bono work and service to the profession.  Her experience of a place informs her approach to landscape architecture as an immersive, tactile experience where texture and atmosphere are of material importance - the experience of a place informs interventions in it.

During the last few years, she has returned to her love of clay and the sculpted form through ceramics, exploring the medium by pushing it with a degree of restraint, conversing with the clay rather than imposing a will upon it.  Her Interests lie in the materiality and method of making, the visceral acts of making, the marks of making. Current work explores the tactile nature of the form and surface of different clay bodies from coarse stoneware to creamy porcelain, and her work encompasses wheel-thrown, hand-built, and hand-carved pieces.  Every piece is an individual exploration of form, texture, and movement, working with the clay while listening to the feedback it provides. Her works are held in private collections.

A native New Yorker, Elena attended Fordham University for her undergraduate studies, earning a Bachelor of Arts in Art History and receiving the Sophocles Papanicolaou Award for Excellence in Art History and Studio Art.  Her professional life started as a textile conservator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a position which allowed a tactile connection to works of art and required thoughtful interventions.  She attended the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Fine Arts where she earned a Master of Landscape Architecture and received the Medal of the American Society of Landscape Architects Certificate of Honor for her portfolio of academic work.

Elena worked at several important practices in New York; she co-founded SCAPE Landscape Architecture and built it into an award-winning 50-person practice with projects around the globe. SCAPE has been honored with the Cooper Hewitt National Design Award, and Elena has been recognized for her service to the profession at the national level as a Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects.  Mentoring the next generation is important to her, and she currently advises emerging professionals on establishing their practices.

Portrait (c) 2015 Ty Cole Photography