Alfred Foundations

This week we welcome Patricia Bellan-Gillen to STUDIO Visits! Writer, Paul Krainak describes Bellan-Gillen’s work as, “Formalist canon meets zoological illustration, penetrated by medieval spiritualism and glossed with personal dream imagery.”

Her most recent body of work continues to build on the use of imagery that honors and questions our stories, suggests a narrative and attempts to engage the viewer’s associative responses: imagery that is at once forgotten but familiar.  The work also celebrates a return to drawing—the sheer love of the fundamental act of working with the most basic of materials.

Bellan-Gillen’s paintings, prints and drawings have been the focus of over 35 solo exhibitions across the U. S., including venues in Washington DC, Chautauqua, NY, Las Cruces, NM, Albany, NY, Bloomington, IL and Portland, OR. Her work has been included in numerous group shows including: Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, NY, Chelsea Museum of Art, New York, NY, Frans Masreel Centrum, Belgium, and the Tacoma Museum of Art, Tacoma, WA.

This week we welcome artist Lori Hepner to STUDIO Visits! Lori’s work focuses on abstracting languages and identity through translation in digital processes and has been exhibited both nationally and internationally.

03_Hepner_britneyspears.jpg @britneyspears, 6:58 PM May 19th from web (#2), Nothing better than a day at the beach with my family! –Britney Digital Archival Pigment Print, 16” x 16” Edition of 15: 2009

She is a graduate of Rochester Institute of Technology, earning a BFA in Fine Art Photography and holds an MFA in Digital Media from the Rhode Island School of Design where she graduated in 2005. Recent exhibitions include: Duke University, Houston Center for Photography, the Carnegie Museum of Art, Silver Eye Center for Photography, and the @1stfans Twitter Art Feed at the Brooklyn Museum, amongst others. Her work has been published in SPE’s Exposure Magazine and the Center for Photography at Woodstock’s Photography Quarterly #99. Most recently, she was selected to participate in PhotoEspaña 2010 in Madrid and is included in a traveling exhibition from PHE10 that is currently being exhibited across Spain through 2011. Lori currently teaches at the Greater Allegheny campus of Penn State University as Assistant Professor of Integrative Arts.

See her work at http://www.lorihepner.com/ or go to STUDIO Visits at http://austudiovisits.wordpress.com/

This Wednesday September 29th, Studio Visits will welcome eco-artist Bob Bingham. Bob Bingham makes art that incorporates systems of growth, live plants  and natural materials with mechanical and electronic devices. Through  this combination of systems he addresses issues pertaining to a  sustainable future where technology and nature exist in a symbiotic  relationship.

Currently he is working through the Coleman Center for the Arts on a long-term collaborative project, One Mile Garden, to establish a community-based urban farming and food distribution program in York, Alabama. Bingham continues his mission to create proposals for growing all the buildings on the planet to change the Google Earth perspective ‘for the birds’ and the humans.

He is a Professor at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Learn more about Bob by going to his website at <http://artscool.cfa.cmu.edu/%7Ebingham/index.html> .

For more info check out the STUDIO Visits blog at http://austudiovisits.wordpress.com/

Next week we will be welcoming artist Joshua Bienko to Studio Visits, the Wednesday morning lecture series and LIVE interview show! He will start off the morning in Holmes at 9 am with his lecture: Desiring le’Con. After a quick stage change, Michelle Illuminato and Brett Hunter will be interviewing Joshua in front of you, the LIVE audience.

Joshua Bienko’s work combines the style of the Flemish masters with the ironic wit of an astute social critic. His precise execution of technique is more of an authentic mental exercise than an emotionally driven expression. What emerges is a heartfelt distance from his subject. His videos, photographs, paintings, interactive sculptures, audio tracks and drawings are nationally and internationally exhibited. Faculty in the Department of Visualization at Texas A&M University.

To learn more about Joshua and his art practice go to http://www.joshuabienko.com/