Born in Queens, NY, Ellen Kozak lives and works in NYC and New Baltimore, NY. Her work is included in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Hudson River Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of Women in the Arts, and the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum.

Kozak has had twenty solo exhibitions in museums in the US and abroad that include two solo shows at the Hudson River Museum; the Katonah Museum of Art, the Osaka Contemporary Art Center and the Tochigi Prefectural Museum of Art, in Japan. Solo shows at galleries include David Richard Gallery, Elizabeth Harris, Katarina Rich Perlow, and Cross Contemporary Art in Saugerties, NY.

She earned her Master of Science in Visual Studies from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Center for Advanced Visual Studies, where she continued as a Center Fellow. She earned her BFA from the Massachusetts College of Art. Between 1982 and 1984 she worked in Japan and studied shodō (traditional Japanese calligraphy).

Kozak taught at Pratt Institute for over twenty years as Professor CCE and has been supported by residencies at Yaddo, the Blue Mountain Center and at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in Auvillar, France. She serves on the Board of Directors of Riverkeeper, Inc.