Ellen grew up in Omro, a small town in Wisconsin. She received a B.S. in Art at the University of Wisconsin Madison and was awarded a Fulbright–Hayes Scholarship to study art in Cameroon, Africa. This experience expanded her understanding of art and of radically different life experiences. She went on to receive a graduate degree at the University of New Mexico. Garvens lived in New York working as an illustrator in the Paleontology Department of The American Museum of Natural History and got her first teaching job, teaching both drawing and photography at Oberlin College in OH. In 1994 she moved to Seattle to teach at the University of Washington and recently retired after 29 years as a Professor of Art in the Photo/Media program.

Additional awards include a National Endowment for the Arts Individual Fellowship Grant; and an Artist Trust /Washington State Fellowship. Her work is in the collections of the Henry Art Gallery, The New Mexico Art Museum, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, The Tacoma Art Museum, Allen Memorial Art Museum Oberlin College OH, the Yale University Art Gallery, and Cornell Museum of Art at Rowlins College, FL among others. Garvens work has been reviewed or featured in national and international magazines, and been included in books on photography, including Photographic Possibilities, by Robert Hirsch and Each Wild Idea, by Geoffrey Batchen. Contact Sheet #150 by Lightwork is dedicated to her mixed media work. She is married to artist Jim Phalen and has two grown children.