 Ellsworth studied at Hampshire College, in Amherst, Massachusetts, where she received a bachelor's degree in fine art, and graduated from the Mason Gross School of the Arts of Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey with a Master of Fine Arts degree in performance and painting.Ellsworth has exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, Australia, and at the Arizona State University Art Museum in Tempe, Arizona.She is one of the founders of the Museum of Walking, which occupies a small room at the Arizona State University Tempe campus.