Elena Hiatt Houlihan has lived out on a limb for thirty years while pursuing her love of art and life. She has broken her fingernails working with metalsmiths to create large-scale sculptures for shopping malls from Florida to Seattle. She has persevered through the night to meet deadlines set by architects and developers. Traveling solo from Bukittinggi to Borneo, she gathered photographs and stories as inspiration for her art. Her mixed-media sculpture and photography have been exhibited in regional and national shows.
As a Visiting Artist through state arts councils, she has lit the spark of creativity in thousands of young people, from Delaware to Indiana, guiding them as they designed major art works for their schools.
The Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation awarded her the prestigious Artist-in-Community Grant in 2004, and she has also received a Cross-Disciplinary Fellowship, and the Cross-Disciplinary Support Grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.
A veteran writer and speaker, as well as an artist, she has delivered seminars and workshops on creativity and the healing power of art at universities, conferences, art centers, and health care facilities. Her articles on the business of art have appeared in such publications as The Crafts Report and Shopping Center World. The Holocaust Memorial Sculpture Project: An Artist's Tale was published in The Teaching Artists' Journal, Spring 2005.
In her spare time she dances the tango, practicing her ochos in the kitchen, dreaming of kicking up her heels at a milonga in Argentina. At a moment's notice, she will drop everything for a sumptuous repast whether at home or at a fabulous restaurant.
