Qiana holds a BFA with a concentration in Jewelry/ Metal Arts, Photography, & Writing from California College of the Arts.
Qiana Ellis is a Californian artist and designer working across the mediums of metalsmithing, illustration, photography, and painting.
She is inspired by patterns- visual, seasonal, cultural, emotional-and how they create our sense of self and define our collective consciousness. She has an endless fascination for natural growth patterns- the visual language of creation and decay. Qiana is also curious about the human pattern: how we define where the self ends & the collective begins- of how we fit to each other, how we feel together, and the mark that our presence leaves in our environment.
In 2019 Qiana completed her first residency at Ashara Ekundayo Gallery in Oakland, an incubator space for black womxn artists in Oakland, where she explored line, form and color through painting, completing several large-scale canvases over the course of three months. She then went on to the residency program at the Mendocino Art Center 2019-2020, where she reconnected to her metalsmithing practice and solidified her dedication to the natural beauty of California, by creating jewelry that displays a sense of power in place through the beauty of the Northern California coast.
