Ellis Angel Featured in Artist as Activist at Rowan University Art Gallery
Draw Me a Star, close-up. Woven from the banned picture book by Eric Carle. Part of Ellis Angel’s new series on children’s book censorship.
Exhibition Dates: June 7 – August 2, 2025
Opening Reception: Saturday, June 7, 4–7 PM, RSVPs encouraged
Location: Rowan University Art Gallery & Museum, Glassboro, NJ
Admission: Free and open to the public
Ellis Angel has been selected to exhibit in Artist as Activist, the 2025 Arts Annual exhibition at Rowan University Art Gallery & Museum, presented in partnership with the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. This juried show highlights artists who use their creative practice to address urgent social, political, and cultural issues—demonstrating how art can function not just as expression, but as action.
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Banned Books as Protest: Weaving Back What Was Erased
For this exhibition, Ellis presents three woven works that confront book censorship head-on.
One piece, created from This Book Is Gay by Juno Dawson, is part of The Censor’s Cut: Weavings for Intellectual Freedom—a series of protest weavings made from banned and challenged books. Each work in that series begins by shredding the physical book and reweaving it, transforming the silencing of a text into something visible, undeniable, and new.
This Book Is Gay, woven from the banned book by Juno Dawson. Part of The Censor’s Cut series.
The other two weavings—In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak and Draw Me a Star by Eric Carle—are part of Ellis’s new series focused specifically on banned picture books. This growing body of work is based on PEN America’s list of the most banned children's books, and continues Ellis’s exploration of censorship, childhood, and the radical act of storytelling.
Each work challenges the idea that books—especially those created for young readers—can or should be suppressed. These fiber-based protest pieces reclaim what has been removed and honor the voices that created them. The result is a quiet, deliberate rebellion—a kind of quiet defiance made from thread and text.
In the Night Kitchen, reimagined in thread. Banned for its depiction of childhood nudity.
Draw Me a Star, woven from the banned picture book by Eric Carle. Challenged for depicting a nude figure in a creation story.
About the Exhibition
Curated by Brittany Webb, Evelyn and Will Kaplan Curator of 20th Century Art and the John Rhoden Collection at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA), and Dejay Duckett, Director of Curatorial Services at the African American Museum in Philadelphia (AAMP), Artist as Activist brings together a wide range of New Jersey-based artists using diverse mediums—from paint and photography to political textile art—to respond to issues like racial and gender equity, climate change, access to resources, and civil liberties.
A representative from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts will be in attendance and offering remarks during the reception. Come for the art, stay for the dialogue.
Featured Artists
This year’s exhibition features work by:
Laura Frazure
Adam Gustavson
Anonymous artist
Plan Your Visit
Opening Reception
Saturday, June 7, 2025
4:00–7:00 PM
Rowan University Art Gallery & Museum
301 High Street West, Glassboro, NJ
Free admission
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Exhibition poster for Artist as Activist at Rowan University Art Gallery.
