Utopia Machine is an ongoing project for which Ellen Harvey is painting people’s responses to the question “what would make this world into a utopia?” The paintings reference the drawings required to submit a patent with colors inverted, the white becoming black and the black, white. They include the texts that people submitted explaining their ideas. The paintings are designed so that they all connect to form a collective utopia.

To see all the individual submissions  or to send in your idea, SUBMIT HERE.

The first  60 paintings are currently on view at at the Getty Gallery in the Los Angeles Central Library for the exhibition No Prior Art: Illustrations of Invention, curated by Todd Lerew, as part of the Getty Foundation’s 2024 initiative, PST Art: Art and Science Collide.