Visiting Artist Presentation
Monday, October 9, 2017, 4:00pm
Storrs Campus, Art Building, Arena Gallery

Rita Lombardi received her BFA from Massachusetts College of Art and Design and her MFA from The University of Connecticut. She has been the recipient of grants and scholarships, including a travel grant from the University of Connecticut, a travel scholarship from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, and the John Renna Arts Scholarship, National Endowment for the Arts.  She was an artist in residence at the School of Visual Arts in NY and at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, CT.

Lombardi currently resides in central New York state where she is Assistant Professor of Photography at Pratt Munson-Williams-Proctor Art Institute. Her work has been exhibited in museums and galleries nationally; in Los Angeles, New York, Boston, Louisville, and throughout New England. She has been published in both print and online publications, including F-Stop Magazine, Afield Magazine, Redivider Literary Journal, and Blank Canvas Magazine. Her photographs can be found in various private collections.

Rita Lombardi: Artist Statement

I am endlessly curious about life and the motivations that guide us. It is through observing and picturing the world around me that I come to an understanding of it. I use a variety of materials and instruments within photography to come to these visual understandings. I have involved printmaking, repetition and chance, high-end digital and old-school antique processes, and every format of film camera from 35mm to 8×10. For me, it isn’t so much about what I am using, as it is about what it is I am making and how that relates to what I have used to make it; a symbiotic process of cause and effect.

I am currently, as I often do, working on multiple “projects”. In On Libraries, I am picturing the present usage of community libraries, acknowledging their rich history and striving to see them as a vital part of the future despite their complex and changing current role. With Liminal Umbra I explore abstraction in a photographic artifact, the glass negative.

I find that the best way to answer my own questions is to make things until I understand. I recall the voice of a grade school teacher saying “the only stupid question is the one you don’t ask.”  Put more succinctly by Alice Walker, “So much of the satisfying work of life begins as an experiment; having learned this, no experiment is ever quite a failure.”

 

More information: http://https://humanities.uconn.edu// & http://symbolicreparations.org/

Join us this Wednesday April 19th, 2017 at 6:30pm for the opening reception of “Include, Exclude,” by Diana Abouchacra. This work explores Xenophobia through printmaking. A performance will take place at 7:00pm.

Reception will take place in Vais Gallery located inside the art building, RM 109 on the first floor.

The exhibit will be on view through April 22, 2017.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Visiting photographer and environmental activist from India Ravi Agarwal

• Department of Art & Art History Sculpture/Ceramics Area & the Association of Ceramic Artists (Clay Club) Student Organization Present Our Spring 2017 Visiting Artist with support from the Gus Mazzocca Visiting Artists and Scholars Fund 

  Claudia Alvarez

  Artist Lecture/Demonstration

  Thursday – Friday March 30-31, 2017 

  10:00am-12:30pm & 1:30-4:00pm

  Art Building Rm. 117

   

  Claudia Alvarez is a painter and sculptor currently living in New York City. Born in Monterrey, Mexico in 1969 and raised in California from the age of three, she received a BA from the University of California, Davis in 1999, and an MFA from California College of Arts, San Francisco in 2003.

  Alvarez worked at the University of California Davis Medical Center in Sacramento, California from 1987-2000. Deeply affected by the terminally ill children and elderly patients she encountered as a non-emergency ambulance driver, she reflects on their strength and vulnerability through her painted and sculpted figures.

  The Art Building main entrance is located on Bolton Road behind the Drama/Music Building on Rte. 195 Hillside Road at 280 Bolton Rd. Storrs, CT 06269

  For more information, contact: Department of Art & Art History Office at 860-486-3930

STRUCTURES

Paintings by Laura Newman

Newman states,

“In my recent paintings, architectural structures serve as containers for space. My paintings fold together a variety of approaches to form-among them hard-edged geometrical shapes, loose gestural forms arrived at through the actual process of painting, and representational references. The imagery in my work is poised between building sites and urban ruins, structures and deconstruction. Brushstrokes form structures that frame geometric paintings, embedded windows and fragments of views.”

We are happy to invite newly admitted students to join our faculty and current students on Monday, March 27, for a special event: Spring into the Arts!

We’ll begin with a welcome reception at 2:00 pm, in the basement level of the Bishop Center, located at One Bishop Circle, Storrs.  From there, we will proceed to two unique hands-on workshops with our faculty, followed by dinner with current students and faculty. We wrap up at 7:00 p.m., which is in plenty of time for you to take in an evening arts event on campus or explore our downtown.

This event provides a unique opportunity for prospective students to spend time with us, as part of our community.

As a side note, while we’re usually very happy to see parents and families, Spring into the Arts! is an event for admitted students only.   However, we will be hosting a parents’ session from 6:00 – 7:00 p.m. on this evening in Room 107 of the Art Building.  Parents and families will be able to speak with Eva Gorbants, Assistant Dean and Director of Advising for the School of Fine Arts.  Assistant Dean Gorbants is a great resource, and is very knowledgeable about all academic matters.  Parents and families will also be welcome to join us at the general University Open House on Saturday, April 8.

The UCONN MFA students invite you to the 2017 Spring Semester Open Studios Event! Current artwork from the graduate students will be on view and their studio doors will be open, this is a great opportunity to talk with the MFA students about their work and studio practice + there will be a taco bar provided by Moe’s Southwest Grill!

Thursday, March 9th from 6-8PM at the Visual Arts Research Center (VARC) located on UConn’s Depot Campus in the Lebanon and Colchester buildings.

Address is: 95 Ahern Lane Storrs Mansfield, CT, 06269

DIRECTIONS:

The VARC is located on the UConn Depot Campus, just off Rt. 44.

*BY BUS: From the UConn main campus, take the Purple Line and get off at the Lebanon Cottage stop

*BY CAR: From 195, take Rt 44 West.

At the stoplight next to the former prison, make a left onto Walters Avenue. Stay right at the fork to merge onto Ahern Lane.

Just past the abandoned buildings, you should see Lebanon Cottage and a blue sign that says “Visual Arts Research Center.” Parking is FREE and so are the tacos. See you there!

Join us for the Opening Reception of “Stampede”
Solo Exhibition by Cate Solari, OUR Idea Grant Awardee
Thursday, March 2, 2017
6:00pm – 8:00p
VAIS Gallery, Art Building Room 109
University of Connecticut, Storrs

 

Join us for the opening reception of Raccogliere – A study of gatherings and public spaces in Florence, Italy” artwork by Louise Astorino.

Reception time is 6:30 – 8:30 p.m.
Location: Vais Gallery, Art Building Room 109

Louise Astorino is one of the recipients for the UCONN IDEA GRANT.

More Event Details

Wednesday, February 8, 2017, 3:30pm
Artist Presentation – Storrs Campus, Art Building, Room 109

Patrick Earl Hammie is an American visual artist best known for his large-scale portrait and
figurative paintings that draw from art history and visual culture to examine cultural identity, social
equity, and critical aspects of gender and race today. Hammie’s body of work is defined by his
ongoing engagement with the history of painting, and his use of scale, expression, and emotive
subject matter recalls the painterly gestures of the Baroque and Romantic periods. In part his
interest is historical: he studies the pictorial, technical, and narrative conventions of Western art to
explore the ways in which primarily male artists have imagined the body. Considering such
conventions in a contemporary context, he delivers fresh ideals of bodies of color and women that
both disturb the existing cannon and normalize their presence in public art space and
discourse. Hammie is an Associate Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
His work has been exhibited in galleries throughout the U.S. and abroad, and he has received
awards and grants from Alliance of Artists Communities with the Joyce Foundation, Indianapolis
Art Center, Tanne Foundation, University of Illinois, Wellesley College, and Zhou B Art Center.
His work is a part of several prominent collections including the Kohler Company Collection,
JPMorgan Chase Art Collection, John Michael Kohler Art Center, and William Benton Museum of
Art. He has been an artist-in-residence at the John Michael Kohler Art Center and was named an
“Artist to Watch” by the International Review of African American Art. Hammie is represented by
Yeelen Gallery in Miami and Kruger Gallery in Chicago.

http://www.instagram.com/patrickearlhammie
www.instagram.com/patrickearlhammie
www.facebook.com/patrickearlhammieartist

 

 

The 2016 Masters of Fine Arts Exhibition: Are We All Here? opened on April 9th featuring work from our current Graduate students in The Department of Art and Art History. UConn Today wrote a piece about the show highlighting Sculptor Amanda Bulger and Painter Kamar Thomas, and exploring the differing inspiration behind their work. The article also mentions video work by Don Burton, installation pieces from Neil Daigle-Orians, and drawings by Kacie Davis.

To see the article in its’ entirety go to UConn Today.

The day is almost here! The 2016 BFA Exhibition begins tomorrow with an opening reception from 6pm-8pm in Artspace Windham Gallery at 480 Main St, Willimantic, Connecticut 06226. 

There will be work on display from our graduating seniors in Sculpture/Ceramics, Photography/Video, Painting/Drawing, Illustration/Animation, Graphic Design, and Printmaking, as well as food donated by local restaurants, and great music. Come out and support our Seniors, and enjoy projects that they have been working on all year.

See the Facebook Page for all of the details!

Here’s a look at our seniors setting up their work.