New Mexico-based artist and researcher Nina Elder joined the faculty of Sierra Nevada University’s MFA-IA program this January just in time to teach at her first residency. While New Mexico is in her roots, Elder’s projects take her all over the United States connecting with people, place, and environment.
“Emerging from the human psyche and showing characteristics of abstract expressionism, minimalism and Russian constructivism, graffiti removal has secured its place in the history of modern art while being created by artists who are unconscious of their artistic achievements.” – The Subconscious Art of Graffiti Removal
“We see on our shelves, in Handsome Volumes, the Works of old Authors who lived and wrote before the invention of printing; but how few of us ask ourselves the questions: Where are the originals of which these books are the copies? And what authority have we for the genuineness of the text?” – William Forsyth
Richard Petrucci is something of a landscaper. Or rather, an archivist of landscapes. Petrucci’s work throughout the Sierra Nevada College MFA-Interdisciplinary Arts program has focused on the human management of our appreciation of nature. As Christopher Thacker writes in The History of Gardens, the first gardens were likely discoveries — “…such spots are the gardens of the gods, or of those favoured by the gods, so that they need do no work to keep the place in order.” Petrucci’s work explores this question then, exploring our enjoyment of nature, and the notion of “enjoyment” itself as a product of our time.
Nicole Harper seeks the everyday, the banal, the overlooked. When she finds a niche there, she exploits it and activates it with combinations of the materials present with video projection, drawing, signage and sculpture.
Karen Krolak is deeply concerned with pathways. A choreographer at heart, her work winds its way through life’s processes, bringing the audience to sets of instruction and action that result in revelations both in her work and in the participants. Read More
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