Eastern Art Gallery presents 'Imagined Places, Inhabited Spaces'
Willimantic, CT (06/24/2022) — The Art Gallery at Eastern Connecticut State University will present "Imagined Places, Inhabited Spaces" from June 27 - Sept. 2. The exhibition showcases the work of four artists who question the places we live in with a visual mash-up of "reality" and interpretations of the spiritual/metaphysical world.
"From exposing the demographics of race to exploring utopian worlds operating in cyberspace, the artists insinuate new ways of inhabiting both real and imagined spaces,' said Julia Wintner, director of the Art Gallery.
Adrienne Chadwick was born in Toronto of Belizean ancestry, and lives and works in Hollywood, FL. Her mixed media installations utilize accumulation and repetition to resist the status quo from her BIPOC position. Chadwick is also an arts administrator who has dedicated 27 years to reimagining art museums and advocating for excellence in arts, culture and education. She is founder of Culture Conduit Consulting, providing arts education, public programming, community engagement and diversity, equity and inclusion resources to organizations across industries.
AdrienneRose Gionta is a south Florida-based multi-disciplinary artist from Brooklyn, NY. She self identifies as a "pop-culture consigliere," "VJ soothsayer" and "rose whisperer." She is a "digital ideation butterfly," an "extended reality evangelist," an "Internet of Things Svengali" and "50 Shades of Earl Grey." Gionta's work analyzes identity and cultural assumptions about fatness, beauty standards, embodiment and fulfillment on and offline. She works with avatars to create inclusive environments inspired by her obsession with HGTV in both real and imagined worlds where fat-bodied women have it all.
Rod Faulds blends multiple digital images to create bold artworks that fuse figuration and abstraction. "The images I 'collect' are combined and constructed or formally designed into abstract compositions made from extremely pedestrian and certainly unromantic images," said Fauld. He is attracted to the moments of entering, passing through and leaving, and depicts these fugitive flashes through mundane elements that few people would consider worthwhile visual subjects.
Lydia Viscardi utilizes mixed media, oil and collage to create paintings that depict complicated layered scenes. The resulting textures and saturated color palette encourages the viewer to explore every nook and cranny to discover what hides within their compositions. Found textiles and images offer uncanny moments of legibility in otherwise chaotic scenes. All of this informs her fine-art creative life at her Newtown, CT studio.
The Art Gallery is open this summer Monday - Friday from 10 - 4 p.m. For more information, visit https://www.easternct.edu/art-gallery/ or contact the gallery at (860) 465-4659, or the gallery director at wintnerj@easternct.edu .
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Eastern Connecticut State University is the state of Connecticut's public liberal arts university, serving more than 4,300 students annually on its Willimantic campus. In addition to attracting students from 163 of Connecticut's 169 towns, Eastern also draws students from 31 states and 10 countries. A residential campus offering 41 majors and 65 minors, Eastern offers students a strong liberal art foundation grounded in a variety of applied learning opportunities. Ranked as the #1 public regional university in New England by U.S. News & World Report in its 2020, 2021 and 2022 Best Colleges ratings, Eastern has also been awarded 'Green Campus' status by the Princeton Review 12 years in a row. For more information, visit www.easternct.edu.