Elena Colombo is a classically trained sculptor and architectural designer, who owns and operates Colombo Construction Corporation, a full service conceptual design and fabrication firm specializing in site specific, large-scale works: fire, water and wind features, memorials, markers, environmental art, and sculpture.   Colombo's design work has appeared in The New York Times, Architectural Record, Interiors, British Elle Décor, InStyle Home, Vogue Living, Martha Stewart, Garden Design, Flair, Country Home, Country Living, Robb Report, Domino, Mademoiselle, and Glamour magazines, and several recently published books: Waterside Living, Ancient and Modern, On Display, and Outdoor Spaces.   Colombo works directly with clients and architectural firms to create works that extend the realm of architecture further into the landscape. Colombo creates forms that are simple, elegant and ancient which address our primal need for the elements earth, fire, water and wind. She uses bronze, steel, stone, concrete and bone.   Colombo is currently manufacturing a series of interior and exterior fire features for public and private clients. The first in the series are the outsized outdoor firebowls. The four to six-foot diameter steel bowls are fitted with a 250,000 or 300,000 BTU burner, a connection for propane or natural gas, and a manual pilot ignition system for safe and controlled ignition.   Among Colombo's early clients are hotelier Andre Balazs, who commissioned firebowls for the cocktail terrace at Sunset Beach, his Shelter Island hotel, for his private residence in New York, and for the new Raleigh and Lido Hotels in Miami Beach; Lisa Marie Presley; Anne Rice; and the landmark Hotel Roosevelt in Hollywood has installed 10 firebowls around the pool.   Firebowls are installed at Jonathan Adler's Parker Meridian, Palm Springs; The Lodge at Cordillera, Colorado; Marmol Radziner Prefab Prototype house; Desert Springs, California; Paul Hobbs Winery, Press Restaurant, St. Clement Vineyards, Benzinger Vineyards and Alpha Omega Winery in Napa Valley.

Colombo's Firebowl has been nominated as 'Best Outdoor Product' by the 2004 Design and Decoration Awards, and was recently a featured center piece in horticulturalist Jamie Durie's gold medal winning garden at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show.   "I am ever inspired by the elemental nature of fire, and the primal need we have for it. Fire serves both our need for beauty and our instinct to gather around a warm lighted place; it is a destination wherever it burns. For 600,000 years we have shared food, stories, and experiences around the fire; during the last hundred, we seem to have abandoned the hearth as the focus of community. I would like to restore the hearth as a ceremonial place and as a point of convergence."   Prior to opening her company, Colombo worked extensively in print and television media as a director of award winning television commercials and print campaigns for Proctor and Gamble, IBM, Kellogg's, Spalding, Oil of Olay, Chevy, Mattel, Caterpillar, and Nintendo.   After graduating from college, Elena began work at Broadcast Arts in model design and production on the set of Pee Wee's Playhouse, learning storyboard production, animation, special effects rigging and art direction. She continued working in this design capacity for Woo Art International, MTV and VH1.   Education: Elena graduated from Trinity College, Hartford CT in 1984 with a BA in both fine arts and art history, with a concentration in architectural design, sculpture and etching. While at Trinity, she spent a year abroad in Rome at the Caesar Barbieri Center to study sculpture, painting and the Italian Renaissance. Elena continued her education in the arts at the Museum School in Boston, Massachusetts.   Elena lives and works in Brooklyn and Greenport New York and can be contacted at 212.334.5069.