Breanne Trammell is a multi-disciplinary artist with a background in printmaking. Her practice is fluid and project-specific as she pivots between installation, sculpture, publishing, performance, curatorial projects, and collaborative making. Her studio work is a playful constellation of diaristic sculptural objects and prints that explore the confluence of high and low brow, and shares commonplace experiences that are mined from the everyday and her personal history. Using humor and playful formalism, Breanne subverts traditional printmaking techniques to elevate low and ubiquitous objects, printed matter, and digital ephemera. Her publishing imprint Teachers Lounge loosely operates as a forum to explore subversive topics and reveal hidden histories related to education, activism, politics, sports, and visual culture. Breanne’s work has been widely exhibited and she has been an artist-in-residence at the Women’s Studio Workshop, Kala Institute, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, Ox-Bow School of Art, Endless Editions, among others. Breanne received her MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and is an Assistant Professor of Fine Arts at the University of Cincinnati.

Mary Banas develops conceptual and informed designs for brands, institutions, and social practices with her independent creative practice YES IS MORE which includes design, visual research, and teaching.

Mary has designed for and with organizations and companies including COLLINS, Designer Fund, Dolby Labs, Honor, Mode Analytics, Postmates, Segment, and WBUR Boston. In 2018 she designed Japanese-American singer-songwriter Mitski’s album Be The Cowboy which was nominated in the “Best Recording Package” category for the 61st annual Grammy Awards.

She was a resident for Design Inquiry, Maine in 2016 where she developed work investigating the possibilities and limitations of line, both as a form and concept, and in 2018 with a close-read of Sol LeWitt’s 1981 artist book Autobiography resulting in Alternative Texts: What Are You Reading? which launched at Limited Edition Gallery inside John McNeil Studio in Berkeley, CA.

Mary has taught graphic design since 2009, notably as Visiting Assistant Professor in Residence at the University of Connecticut, Rhode Island School of Design, the University of Bridgeport, as well as leading design workshops for the Center for Creative Solutions (Vermont), Dolby Labs (San Francisco), OTIS College of Art and Design (Los Angeles), and the Berkeley Art Museum + Pacific Film Archive (Berkeley). She has been a visiting critic at MICA and Pratt Institute.

BFA, University of Connecticut
MFA, Rhode Island School of Design

 

 

Congratulations to Prof. Janet Pritchard for being awarded a 2019 Guggenheim Fellowship. Each year, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation awards roughly 175 fellowships to select individuals from a pool of over 3,000 applicants. These fellowships are intended to recognize individuals that express an exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts.

Janet’s work as a landscape photographer is exhibited in galleries and museums throughout the United States, as well as in the United Kingdom. Her photography is also a part of eight prestigious permanent collections in venues both here and the U.K. Her current project, More than a River: the Connecticut River Watershed, is expected to continue for many years. It involves photographing the Connecticut River landscape and contextualizing it as a complex set of interconnected systems where the land and riverscape impact the lives of the people who call it home and vice versa. Her work seeks out the intersection of nature and culture. The Guggenheim Fellowship will provide her with the opportunity to better understand the ecological concerns throughout the watershed and delve deeper into a few significant topics that she can weave into the larger story she will be telling through her work.

 

 

Please join us for the opening reception of Anonymous Is A Woman, reflections on the erasure and representation of the female body through history by Isabella Saraceni ’19 (Studio Art, SFA).  The reception will be held on Monday, April 15, 2019 from 6:00pm-8:00pm in VAIS Gallery, Art Building Room 109. This event is open to the University community and the general public. The show will run from April 15th – April 19th. Click here to learn more about the artist. This project is funded by a UConn IDEA Grant.

 

Art + Feminism Wikipedia Edit-a-thon hopes to bring more coverage of gender, feminism, and the arts on Wikipedia. The Art + Feminism Edit-a-thon will be taking place on Monday, April 1 from 4 to 7 p.m. in the Greenhouse Studios and the Humanities Institute, located in the Babbidge Library. If you are at the Hartford Campus, it will take place from 4 to 7 p.m. in HTB 223 Computer Lab.

Read more about the Art + Feminism Wikipedia Edit-a-thon here

If you are interested in concentrating in Graphic Design the portfolio review for entry into the concentration will be held on Friday March 8th. Please print out this application form, fill out all that applies and bring it with you to the review. Follow this link to sign up for a time slot.

 

Protests, Proclamations, and Celebrations: 
Sharon Hayes

Part Two of Four Acts

 

 

Artist Sharon Hayes is part of our four part exhibition, Protests, Proclamations and Celebrations. She addresses ideas of romantic love, queer theory, activism, and politics. Incorporating recordings, speeches, songs, and letters along with her own writing, she describes her practice as “a series of performatives rather than performance”. She will be participating in an artist talk and opening reception from 5 pm to 7pm on Monday 25th in the Art Building at UCONN. Please join us for refreshments and conversation with the artist.

 

Ricerche: Three, 2016, Film Still

 

Fingernails on a Blackboard: Bella, 2014, Video Still 

 

We Cannot Leave This World to Others, 2014, Video Still

 

Ricerche: Three, 2016, Installation Shot

 

Protests, Proclamations, and Celebrations: Shen Xin

Part One of Four Acts

 

 

Shen Xin delivered an artist talk to the UCONN community followed by a reception at the Contemporary Art Galleries. Shen also met with the graduate students for individual critiques. 

 

Installation view of Shen Xin’s Escape Forms: Prologue, 2016 and Provocation of the Nightingale, 2017. 

 

Still from Provocation of the Nightingale, 2017

 

Shen Xin speaks at the Thomas J. Dodd Center

Nathan Fox, an award-winning illustrator, held two talks and a public critique for UConn students on February 19^th.  He is co-creator and artist on THE WEATHERMAN and is Chair of MFA Visual Narrative, a low-residency graduate program in visual storytelling. He works with clients such as NYTimes, The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, Wired, Scholastic, MT, Nike, and more.

 

If you are in New York on Saturday, February 16th, please stop by for one of the last days of this sumptuous exhibition by Mumbai based artist Sujith S.N. at Aicon Gallery on Great Jones Street.  Kathryn Myers will be doing a gallery talk with him. You won’t want to miss it!     

 

Please join us for the opening reception of Prismatic, a reflection on transgender and non-binary experience, on February 18th from 6-8pm in room 109 of the Art Building! This IDEA Grant will be on display in the VAIS Gallery from February 18th to the 22nd

 

Thursday February 7, 12:15-1:45 pm 
Branford House, UConn Avery Point

This will be a discussion among UConn students, faculty and staff about sexual violence and consent.It will be offered in conjunction with a gallery installation featuring the work of UConn graduate student Jeanne Ciravolo, and is based on UConn’s Humility and Conviction in Public Life’s “Encounters” reflective, structured dialogue model. This discussion will include a variety of experts: representatives from Safe Futures, UConn’s Counseling and Mental Health Services and UConn’s Women’s Center.

Lunch will be served.

February 7th
9am to 11am
Dodd Center Konover Auditorium

Shen Xin was born in Chengdu, China and currently is living and working in London
and Amsterdam. She graduated from La Salle College of the Arts in Singapore and
earned her MFA from the Slade School of Fine Art in London.

Provocation of the Nightingale , 2017 and Forms Escape: Prologue , 2016, are two of
Shen Xin’s exhibited multichannel media works that are complex and profound, and
require time and concentration to decipher. Both works avoid linear narrative and the
use of irony, for Shen Xin does not want to restrict viewers’ freedom to make their
own assumptions. “It’s a very sensory experience when things are complex because
you have to be open. That’s why I want to move away from irony because I want to
explore how to be even more engaged with that ability to open up space when
viewing the film.” You are continually challenged to assess how you come to believe
and form opinions about something. For Shen Xin, that something is connected with
notions of love, suffering, emotional pain and spirituality along with afflictions of
contemporary capitalism’s relationship with power and how Buddhist philosophy and
everyday life interconnect.