Artist Eldi Dundee

Eldi Dundee: Born May 1970 in Brooklyn, raised in Long Island, now lives thousands of miles away, in London. "Eldi", which apparently means "fire" in archaic Icelandic, is self-taught, apart from her uncle's influence-- Nick Drakides, a successful commercial artist in 70's-80's Manhattan-- who not only taught her how to draw and paint, he gave her all his surplus art supplies. Education and biography: Her first and only solo exhibit to date was at the Railway pub in Clapham, SW London in 1996, after which, she did a bit more travelling before moving back to the US for a few years, leaving her work in storage until quite recently ("...getting nibbled by mice and shat on by bats in the attic of a friend's summer home in Normandy!"). Lately, rather than producing big bulky pieces that would get in the way of a nomadic lifestyle, Eldi took to digital photography "to lighten and simplify [her] load". Now that she has finally chosen to plant roots in one place (having had a child with a London-based Englishman) Eldi is looking forward to working on a much larger scale again. Eldi's education has been a fairly unconventional one. "My parents were trying to give me a safe and solid suburban middle class upbringing and I rebelled against it with all my might according to whatever reasons I held dear at the time." She attended Massapequa High School, from 1983 to '86, when she quit, aged 16, but returned again for a brief spell in '87 before dropping out completely and getting her GED (High School Equivelency Diploma) through Queen's College the following year (1988: the year her high school class would have been graduating anyway). She then attended Nassau Community College in Garden City, Long Island, where she studied Liberal Arts (Humanities) for an "Associate in the Arts" Degree (AA). However, at that point she was keen to go directly on to her BA, and had all her credits from her first year transferred at year 2 towards a degree in Human Ecology at the College of the Atlantic (COA) in Bar Harbor, Maine. She never completed her BA: "it cost $25k USD per year at the time (it now costs over $45k!!) and my father was going through a very difficult time financially. I dropped out, one year short of getting my BA. A modelling agency in Manhattan offered me a contract, so I went back to NY and did that instead. I had become quite disillusioned with my degree programme anyway, so it was the perfect excuse to branch out again." Future shows: Eldi will begin another degree (one she is determined to finish this time!) in Fine Art Skills and Practices at Central St Martins/Byam Shaw. She has been attending a short painting course at Camberwell, and will be showing in the summer with the rest of her class in her teacher's Depford studio...

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