An exhibition of landscapes by Ellen Veden opens at the Center for Modern Aging with a reception on Thursday, September 25, from 5 to 7 p.m., at 101 Poor Farm Road. The reception is free, but registration is requested at engage.cmaprinceton.org/component/events/event/1301.
Veden, a native New Yorker who has worked and lived all over the world, is now a longtime resident of Princeton. While a naturalistic painter, Veden also uses intense coloration, often focusing on how changes in light like sunsets reveal a subtle lyricism in the Princeton and surrounding areas.
After she received a BFA in Fine Arts and an MA in Anthropology, she entered the New York art world when New York was beginning to replace Paris as the center. She lived in a studio loft on Grand Street in SoHo and participated in many juried shows with solo exhibitions at the Fimbres Gallery. Her friends were the Post-World War II generation of artists — abstract expressionists like Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner, and photographers like Robert Frank.
Included in the exhibition at the Center for Modern Aging is a portrait of Veden by the painter and print artist June Leaf, Frank’s wife. Veden taught art at the New York High School of Music and Art, now the LaGuardia High School of Music and Art, and the Performing Arts.
Veden also had friends in the burgeoning Post-World War II television industry. One of those friends, who was a producer at NBC, saw a program Veden produced with her students on Manhattan Cable Television and offered her a job in television broadcasting. After working at NBC and PBS, where the main sponsor was AT&T, Veden was asked to join AT&T to manage its New York City office for Skynet Satellite Services.
During that time, she was also a member of the New York City Arts and Business Council and one of the early volunteers at the Hole in the Wall Gang Camps, founded by actor and philanthropist Paul Newman to provide a summer camp experience for seriously ill children.
Interested in living abroad, Veden left AT&T to join France Telecom first, and later Teleglobe Canada and Belgacom, to assist those companies in pursuing the United States broadcast satellite network business. Always intellectually curious, Veden was led by those experiences to join Motorola and LG Electronics to learn the product end of cellular and digital technology.
When Veden retired and relocated to Princeton she renewed her youthful involvement in painting and drawing, using the surrounding area as her inspiration. She is a member of a group of artists called the Creative Collective, and her work has been shown in more than 50 venues in the area, including the juried Ellarslie, City of Trenton Museum shows. She now serves on the board of the Princeton Adult School. For many years until its demise, she was a member of the board of the Princeton Friends of Opera. She has also served on the Trenton Museum at Ellarslie board.
This Center for Modern Aging exhibition, which remains on view through Friday, October 10, is curated by Judy Brodsky and Ella Leving. Prints are available for purchase, with 50 percent of proceeds benefiting The Center for Modern Aging Princeton (CMAP).
More information: cmaprinceton.org.
