Elisa Ortega Montilla is an artist based in Santa Barbara. A social worker with over a decade of experience, she recently completed a Master of Fine Arts at the University of California, Santa Barbara and was chosen as the 2019-2020 Artist-in-Residence. She has participated in collective and solo exhibitions in Spain, Guatemala, and California. Her work is currently on display in the show Offal at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, and in September she will be in the Sur: Biennial at the Torrance Art Museum. Her practice uses installation, wood sculptures, and reclaimed and overlooked textiles, addressing themes of memory, transformation, adaptation, and identity through materials that have been discarded, deconstructed, and reconstructed. Mixing the found and the made, the new and the old; tradition and experimentation; the mass-produced and the handmade; her Spanish values and her American experience.