A number of School of Art alumni, students, faculty and staff have been included in the 2008 Pittsburgh Biennial, currently on view at Pittsburgh Filmmakers and Pittsburgh Center for the Arts through August 24, 2008. With the merger of PF and PCA providing expanded resources, the 2008 Biennial presents a continuum of visual arts from still to moving images, as disciplines converge. Encompassing both campuses of PF/PCA, the exhibit includes two new components – a cinema program and a series of art performances. Laura Domencic (BFA '96), Diretor of the PCA and co-curator of the exhibition is an alumni of the School, as is her assistant Jasdeep Khiara (BHA '04). Featured artists from the School of Art include, Matt Barton (MFA ‘06), Kim Beck (Faculty), Josh Bonnett (BFA ‘00), Edgar Um Buchholtz (BFA ‘93), Rebecca Einhorn (BFA ‘85), Margaret Cox (BFA ‘97 and Miller Gallery Staff) & Michael Johnsen, Golan Levin (Faculty), Eileen Maxson (MFA ‘08), Carin Mincemoyer (BFA ‘94), Paper Rad / Jacob Ciocci (MFA ‘05), Drew Pavelchack (BFA ‘03), Suzie Silver (Faculty) & Hilary Harp, Dylan Vitone (Faculty). Suzie Silver and Terry Boyd (BFA '09) performed "I Heart Robots: A Spaceadelic Video Dance Party" at Pittsburgh Filmmakers, as the VJ duo silvertron & boyd for the Biennial Afterparty. http://pittsburghbiennial.org

Andrew Johnson is one of 8 international artists presenting video installations in Art Koltsovo a new public art program for the Koltsovo Airport in Yekaterinburg, the fifth largest city in Russia. The exhibition opened on April 10 and was covered extensively on Russian television stations. Works will be on view up to three months. He also participates as a member of the PED collective in a project for Sound Symposium XIV in St. John's, Newfoundland this July. http://www.artpolitika.ru/ak_en;
http://www.dailymotion.com/related/x53umj_illuminators-exhibition-opening-yer_creation/1; http://www.soundsymposium.com

Elaine A. King's article "Black & White: Two Portrait Stories," was published in the The Journal of American Culture, Volume 31. Issue 1, Page 66-82, March-April 2008. The aim of this article is to create a framework of interpretation about a visual story-family pictures by two dissimilar photographers - Nicholas Nixon, a white male, and an African American female, Carrie Mae Weems. Not only do the artists differ in gender but each approaches the subject of portraiture in a different manner. Nixon employs a traditional approach to photographing his subjects the Brown Sisters—a formal, somewhat detached method that has been ongoing throughout the history of photography while Weems’s "Untitled, Kitchen Table Series" is grounded in multicultural identity theory that evinces autobiographical storytelling. http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1542-734X.2008.00664.x

Golan Levin's work appears in the 2008 Pittsburgh Biennial, at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, through August 24. His work also appears in Digital senses - when digital data turns into art, through May 11 at the Center for Contemporary Art in Kyiv, Ukraine; and in a three-week public exhibition at the Centre Beaulieu in Nantes, France, from May 24 - June 13. http://pittsburghbiennial.org; http://www.aec.at/kiev/en/hardfacts.asp

Ayanah Moor's print, "Your Roll," graces the cover of Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism, a journal published by Indiana University Press. The 2008 special issue entitled "Representin¹: Women, Hip Hop and Popular Music" features the work of scholars, artists and cultural critics. Moor has contributed an essay about her project "STILL," of which several of her works are also reproduced. Ayanah was a juror for the Minnesota National Print Biennial, an exhibit opening October 2008 at the Katherine E. Nash Gallery in the Regis Center for Art at the University of Minnesota. She also presented on a panel entitled "Gender and Sexuality in Hip Hop in the US and Cuba" during the El Proyecto/The Project Hip Hop Conference at Lehigh University, PA, in April. Scholar Gwendolyn D. Pough addresses Ayanah's work in her essay "What It Do, Shorty?: Women, Hip Hop, and a Feminist Agenda" in the University of Illinois Press' journal Black Women, Gender & Families.

Melissa Ragona lectured as a featured guest speaker (along with sound artists, Pamela Z and Luke DuBois) in the Consortium for Digital Arts, Culture, and Technology at Stony Brook University on May 7. In her lecture entitled, "In a Room Listening: Voice Experiments in Contemporary Sound Art," Ragona discussed the phase experiments of Steve Reich, the room frequency recordings of Alvin Lucier, the granular synthesis and spectral tracing of Trevor Wishart, and the Mashups of 2 Many DJs —by framing these works through the critical history of the voice's position in sound theory. Ragona has also been invited by the Yale Research Initiative on the History of Sexualities as a featured panelist and speaker for a conference on Post-War Underground Cinema (1950-1968) to be held at Yale University in February 2009. Other keynote speakers include: Callie Angel (Whitney Museum of Art), Douglas Crimp (Rochester), Jennifer Doyle (UC-Riverside), Tom Gunning (Chicago), and Ann Reynolds (UT-Austin), plus the playwright Robert Heide, filmmaker Ken Jacobs, and critic Amy Taubin. The conference will consist of both public sessions and closed working sessions. Public sessions will feature public lectures, a panel of artists and critics reflecting on the underground scene they witnessed, two evenings of performances, film screenings, and panel discussions, and an exhibition at the Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscripts Library displaying the library’s considerable holdings of papers bearing on the conference theme. The conference is being organized by George Chauncey (Yale), Ron Gregg (Yale), and Juan Suárez (Murcia) on behalf of the Yale Research Initiative on the History of Sexualities (YRIHS). It has received additional support from the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, the Whitney Humanities Center, the Department of the History of Art, the World Performance Project, the Department of Theater Studies, and the Film Studies Program. Ragona is also a featured speaker in an international forum/lecture series at the Free University of Berlin, Germany, on June, 26 called: "The Beauty of Theory: Aesthetics and Theories of Affect Across the Arts and Humanities." This forum will explore the current position of theory in contemporary art and aesthetics across the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences and will feature scholars and artists from the US, Germany, UK, Japan, and Latin America. It is sponsored by InterArt: An International Research Colloqium housed at the Free University (Frei Universitat) in Berlin, Germany. Ragona's lecture, "The Violence of Theory in Contemporary Art," will feature the work of Christian Jankowski (his recent work in which theory becomes the object of attack and jest, i.e. Lycan Theorized), as well as other artists who engage theory in abject and satirical ways. This talk will also address current ideas circulating about the supposed death (and or impotence) of theory and criticism in relation to contemporary art. http://sonicresidues.net; http://www.yale.edu/yrihs; http://www.geisteswissenschaften.fu-berlin.de/interart

Suzie Silver and Hilar Harp's video "Nebula" screened at the Athens International Film Fesitval in the Films About Films program on May 1.

Mary Weidner will be a panelist at the "Mamapalooza/Performing Feminist Motherhood Conference: Outlaw Mothers in Music, Media, Arts and Cultural Expression," on May 16, NYC, Nola Studios, 250 W. 54th St. The conference is sponsored by York University, Toronto, Ontario. Weidner is also exhibiting her work in the Westmoreland Biennial, Westmoreland Museum of American Art, Greensburg, PA, May 11 - June 8.

Raymond Saunders (BFA '60) presented the solo exhibit Pittsburgh at the Stephen Wirtz Gallery in San Francisco, CA, last December. http://wirtzgallery.com/exhibitions/2007/2007_12/saunders_2007_frame.html

Joan Kopchik (A '63) has a one-person show in the executive corridor of Cozen O’Connor Attorneys, 1900 Market Street, Philadelphia, PA, from May 5 - June 13. A Bucks County papermaker and collage artist, she creates contemporary mixed media wall pieces, which are constructed using handmade paper, reeds, stones, wire and metal findings. In addition to many national and international exhibitions, Ms. Kopchik’s work is included in the Rosenwald Collection at the National Gallery of Art, The James A. Mitchner Museum in Doylestown, PA, and over a dozen private and corporate collections. Her work was featured on HGTV in 2001. http://shearfinearts.com

Joyce Kozloff (BFA '64) chats with MoMA Curatorial Assistant Esther Adler in "The Dumb Blonde Theory of Art: Joyce Kozloff" in the 2008 Spring online issue of P.S.1 Newspaper. She is exhibiting in Mapped through May 27 at The Contemporary Museum in Honolulu, HW. http://www.ps1.org/newspaper/view/article/13

Susan Schwalb (BFA '65) has her work featured in Color/Abstraction: 18 Artists at OK Harris Gallery, NYC, from May 31 – July 12 and a solo show, Music of Silence: Silverpoint Paintings and Drawings, at Galerie Mourlot, NYC, through June 21. http://www.okharris.com/; http://www.galeriemourlot.com

Katherine Morgan's (BFA '67) photograph "Elements," juried with Honors into the Biennial 2008 Juried Awards, will be presented in the Boca Raton Museum of Art at the opening reception, in conjunction with the 57th All Florida juried competition, both exhibitions will be open to the public through September 7.

Diane Samuels (BFA '70, MFA '76) and her husband, Henry Reese, have been awarded honorary degrees from Seton Hill University. They are co-founders of City of Asylum, part of an international network that provides sanctuary to exiled writers. http://www.cityofasylumpittsburgh.org

Tom Norulak's(BFA '71) work is on view at the Center for Emerging Visual Artists in Philadelphia, PA, May 19 - June 13; the Westmoreland Art Nationals, May 31 - June 13 at Westmoreland County Community College in Youngwood, PA; Art of the State at the State Museum in Harrisburg, PA, June 29 - September 21; and at Twin Lakes Park in Greensburg, PA, from July 3 - July 6.

Joel Abramson (BFA '78) is an art facilitator for Midwest Special Services and have a commissioned House Portrait business from coast-to-coast. http://www.joeldavidavidabramson.com

Charles Ritchie (MFA '80) presents a solo exhibit, Charles Ritchie: Sketchbooks, at The Gregg Museum of Art & Design, North Carolina State University, in Raleigh, NC, August - October 2008. He has another solo show at Gallery Joe in Philadelphia, PA, opening in November. http://gad.ncsu.edu/?s=exhibitions; http://www.galleryjoe.com; http://www.charlesritchie.com

Marlena Novak (BFA '82), with Jay Alan Kim, screens "Fluid Mechanics Remix" at Digital Media Valencia, curated by Wolf Leiser through May 18. http://www.lasalanaranja.com/digitalmedia; http://www.digitalmediavalencia.com/indexe.php

Boris Bally (BFA '84) has work in the following exhibitions: Whodunnit? the Art Association of Jackson Hole's one night event, May 9, in the Art Association Gallery, Jackson Hole, WY; the International Exhibition curated via the Museum of Art & Design, NYC; Pforzheim Jewelry Academie's Glasswear exhibition opening at its second venue in June (on view through October) at the Glazen Huis Vlaams Centrum voor Hedendaagse Glaskunst, Lommel, Belgium, which travels until 2010 with an illustrated hard-Bound catalog published by Arnoldsche, Germany; the Japan Jewelry Art Competition 2008, organized by the Japan Jewellery Designers Association and mediated by Jim Bové, touring five cities in Japan, opening May 10 at the Ueno Royal Museum, Tokyo; Reclaim, Reuse, Re-Imagine opening this month at Artifacts Gallery, Indiannapolis, IN; Second Lives: Remixing the Ordinary at Museum of Art and Design (MAD) for the inaugural exhibition opening of their new Two Columbus Circle location on view through March 8, 2009; and Manuf®actured: The Conspicuous Transformation of Everyday Objects at the Portland Museum of Craft, OR, August 28, 2008 - January 4, 2009. http://www.artdaily.com/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=23576; http://www.jhartspace.org/whodunnit.htm; http://www.jjda.or.jp/en/exhibit/08/0802.html; http://www.artifactsindy.com; http://contemporarycrafts.org/ex_upcoming.php

David French (BFA '87) presents a solo exhibit, Painting Sedition at Montage Gallery of Federal Hill in Baltimore, MD, through May 31. He will be starting the MFA Program at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. http://www.montagegallery.com

Julie Vinette (BFA '93) presents Influence of Order, a solo show of new works at Atlantic Works Gallery in East Boston, MA, June 5 - 28. http://www.atlanticworks.org

Mia Brownell (BFA '93) and Joyce Kozloff (BFA '64) exhibit in Pretty Things: Confronting Sensuousness curated by Joy Pepe at Artspace in New Haven, CT, through August 9.

Melissa Thorne (BFA '93) currently has a small solo show in Houston, TX, titled A Partial Index of Improvements at Devin Borden Hiram Butler Gallery. She exhibited this April with Galerie Schmidt Maczollek at Art Brussels 26th Contemporary Art Fair. She has also just completed her first year as Assistant Professor of Painting and Drawing at UC Riverside. During the past fall/winter, she organized an exhibition called Fata Morgana at Galerie Schmidt Maczollek in Cologne, Germany. The show featured contemporary watercolor work from Los Angeles, CA, and was reviewed positively in local press.

Paul Vanouse (MFA '96) is 2008 recipient of a Tribeca Film Institute (TFI) Media Arts Fellowship, supported by the Rockefeller Foundation. The fellowship supports "Latent Figure Protocol," an installation in which human DNA samples will be treated in order to produce images. http://news.renewmedia.org/2008/04/30/2008-fellows

Jen Urso (BFA '96) has been selected for the Taliesin Artist Residency Program in Spring Green, WI, for July 2008. She is also a finalist to design terrazzo floors for the Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport and will have 3 drawings included in the juried exhibit Circulation at Booksmart Studio, Gallery Kunstler in Rochester, NY. http://www.jenniferursoart.com

Dana Kleinman (BFA '97) participates in the 2008 Beijing Biennale, and will be attending the opening and symposium there opening July 7 and running through the Olympics until the end of August. She also has a solo show at the Las Cruces Museum of Art, NM, in February 2009. Dana is now working collaboratively with her sister making wall installations combining metal and painting, under the name of KX2. http://www.kx2art.com; http://www.bjbiennale.com.cn

Rachel Schmeidler (BFA '98) had her celebrity mug shot prints featured on CNN.
http://edition.cnn.com/video/#/video/showbiz/2008/04/24/anderson.showbiz.thursday.cnn?iref=videosearch

Mitzi Pederson (BFA '98) exhibited in Power, a group show at Foxy Production in NYC through May 10. http://www.foxyproduction.com/exhibition/view/1186

Martin Prekop and Jen Morris (BFA '98) exhibit in the group show International Arrivals at Robert Morris University Media Arts Gallery in Pittsburgh, PA, through July 26.
http://www.rmu.edu/OnTheMove/wpnews.full_story?inws_seqno=15602&it=&icalledby=umbraco&iattr=+

Matt Keegan (BFA '98) and his work are discussed by Shamim Momim in "Future Greats Part 1: Haris Epaminonda, Matt Keegan, David Smith, Micol Assaël and Eric Wesley" in the April 29 artreview.com. Keegan presents a solo exhibit this September at Anna Helwing Gallery in Los Angeles, CA. http://www.artreview.com/profiles/blog/show?id=1474022%3ABlogPost%3A151751

Paola Cabal (BFA '98) connected with Vija Celmins in the Artists Connect Series at the Art Institute of Chicago, IL, on May 3 in the Morton Auditorium. http://www.artic.edu/aic/calendar/events?EventType=5

Seldon Yuan (BHA '98) exhibits photography/installation in the Group Art show on view August 15 - September 14 at Galleri 69 in Oslo, Norway, with artists Anitra Haendel (USA) Painting/wall installation, Anne Szefer Karlsen (Norway) Photography, Yuka Kinoshita (Japan) Installation, and Samuel Olou (Ghana, Norway) Floor sculpture. http://www.lufthavna.no; http://www.seldonyuan.com

Shawn Lawson (BFA '00) presents his "(De)Construction" series as a solo exhibition, Stereo-Lucidity at Dusk Gallery in Troy, NY, April 25 - May 20. A print from "Surface Traversal" is included in Illuminators at the Koltsovo Airport in Yekaterinburg, Russia. In April, he gave an artist lecture at for the Center for Computer Games Research at IT University in Copenhagen, Denmark, and presented his "Wriggle!" project in a workshop "Measuring Affect in HCI: Going Beyond the Individual" at SIGCHI in Florence, Italy. Last February, Crudeoils presented "One Chair" at Experiencing the War in Iraq at the Arts Exchange in Pawtucket, RI. Shawn also presented "Effervescence," a new 3D animation at Path of Light a curated exhibition at the 2008 conference on Iridescence at Arizona State University.

Josh Bonnett (BFA '00) is pursuing his MFA degree in painting at Virginia Commonwealth University. His paintings are currently on view in the Pittsburgh Biennial. http://pittsburghbiennial.org/bios/bio_bonnet.html

Carolina Loyoloa-Garcia (MFA '00) will be artist in residence for six weeks at La Sala Naranja in Valencia, Spain early this summer.

Peter Mandradjieff (BFA '01) and Matt Keegan (BFA '98) exhibited in Unfurnished Room at Unit B Gallery in San Antonio, TX, through May 2. http://www.re-title.com/exhibitions/UnitBGallery.asp

Michael Caputo (BFA '02) curated Cube Passerby, a group show before the closure of GBE@Passerby in NYC. Alumni in the exhibit included Peter Coffin (MFA '00), Brett Milspaw (BFA Class of '02) and Peter Mandradjieff (BFA '01). http://www.newyorkisdead.biz/cube.html

Kenzo Hakuta (BFA '03) is the director and executive producer for the viral music video "Vote Obama" by recording artist TI$A, front man of underground hip hop super group Sa-Ra signed to Kanye West's label Good Music, released May 5. http://video.yahoo.com/watch/2613454/7709486

Shanna Tellerman (BFA '03 and MET '05) is executive producer of Sim Ops Studios, an Entertainment Technology Center spin-off that develops cutting-edge interactive media. http://www.simopsstudios.com; http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/business/s_554403.html

Ruth Stanford (MFA '04) will exhibit in historic Grant Park, Atlanta, GA, as a part of the City of Atlanta's New(genre) Landscape public art project.

Jeffrey Augustine Songco (BFA '05) will be participating in the 2008 Bushwick Open Studios & Arts Festival, a three-day art/film/music/performance/theater community event in Bushwick, Brooklyn, NY. His studio will be open to the public on Saturday, June 7 and Sunday, June 8 from 12 noon - 7:00 p.m. http://www.gus23.com; http://www.artsinbushwick.org.

Mario Marzan (MFA '05) is currently in San Juan, Puerto Rico, doing a two week residency at El Status Studio in Puerta de Tierra along with artist Izel Vargas. During their stay they've decided to do a photo blog of their experience and the research / project they are conducting. All the images are taken from an iPhone through the program iFlickr, which uploads the images as soon as they're taken. http://www.el-status.com, Link to their project Flickr page on the right hand side.

Adam Davies (MFA '05) is included this summer in the Juried Biennial at the Westmoreland Museum of American Art in Greensburg, PA. In June, he will be the Artist-Educator for the National Gallery of Art’s High School Summer Institute in Washington, DC. He was invited to the Yaddo residency during the month of July from the Corporation of Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, NY.

Matt Barton (MFA '06) presented a video installation in Altered Spaces this March at the FAC Modern in Colorado Springs, CO.

Tiffany Sum (MFA'06) is leaving Ball State University for a faculty position she has accepted at California State University, Long Beach. http://www.sumworks.com

William Schlough (BFA '07) has been living in Los Angeles, CA, and working as a sculptor's assistant. He has recently been awarded a Fulbright to Iceland.

Amos Levy (BFA '07) is the Outreach Program Coordinator for the Center for the Arts in Society at Carnegie Mellon University. http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/aflevy/portfolio/index.html

Lauren Adams (MFA '07) has accepted a position as Assistant Professor of Art at Washington University in St. Louis, MO, commencing this fall 2008.

Ben Kinsley (MFA '08) is the recipient of a Sprout Fund Seed Award for "Street With A View," a neighborhood intervention into Google Street View, a collaboration with Robin Hewlett (BFA '04). He has also been accepted to 2 residencies in Iceland: The NES Artist Residency in Skagaströnd from August 2008 - January 2009 and the SIM Artist Residency in Korpulfsstadir, Reykjavik from October 2008 - November 2008.

John Peña (MFA '08) has been awarded a Fulbright grant to Colombia during the 2008-2009 academic year.

Samina Mansuri (MFA '09) has been awarded the School of Art Sally Gehl Award for Non-Traditional Students.

Leslie McAhren (MFA '10) and Courtney Dow foray into the art of philanthropy and an exercise in making money by recently founding The C.G. Douglas "Wrong Way" Corrigan Summer Travel Fellowship. They are personally raising $1,000 to be awarded to the best proposal for summer travel. The winning proposal (to be notified on or before May 21) will be a display of creativity and self-guided scholarship. http://www.officeofthemayors.com

Congratulations to the recipients of the 2008 School of Art Awards! Robert J. Fingland Freshman Award – Dana Lok; William C. Libby Freshman Award – Peter Stanick; Douglas Pickering Freshman Award – Emily Raffensperger; Harry Holland Freshman Award – Elyse Carr; and Harry Holland Freshman Award – Casey Brandar. Joseph B. Ellis Sophomore Award – Alexandra Rubenstein; John L. Porter Sophomore Award – Tessa Park; Wilfred Readio Sophomore Award – James Chan; and Samuel Rosenberg Sophomore Award – Jessica Jackson. Emily Phyllis Howard Junior Award – Carolyn Clayton; Augusta Fisher Porter Junior Award – Terry Boyd; John L. Porter Junior Award – A.C. Harkness; and Samuel Rosenberg Junior Award – R.J. Tripodi. Samuel Rosenberg Senior Award – Michael Pisano; Samuel Rosenberg Senior Award – Laura Miller; Samuel Rosenberg Senior Award – Ben Bigelow; Samuel Rosenberg Senior Award – Michael Mallis; and Samuel Rosenberg Senior Award – Michael McParlane. And the Marjorie Glassburn Francis Jr./Sr. Women Award went to Julia Stein (BFA '08).

Also, congratulations to the recipients of the first annual School of Art Interdisciplinary Grant! From a very competitive field of strong proposals, the following teams were chosen to share the grant: $3000 goes to the Audio-Visual Fabrication team for their project which aims to integrate technology and fashion in innovative ways, turning clothing into platforms for communication and interaction. Team Members: A.C. Harkness, Art; Paige Warman, Architecture; Natasha Patamapongs, Music; and Eamae Mirkin, Industrial Design. $2000 goes to the Bus Stop Opera team for their project to bring opera to the streets. They will write, compose, and perform short operas with the input and collaboration of riders on the city buses, bringing the everyday and the extraordinary together at bus stops around the city. Team Members: Dawn Weleski, Art/Contextual Practice; Joseph De Golia, Philosophy/Linguistics; Molly McCurdy, Drama/Dramaturgy; Sam Creely, Drama/Directing; and Ashley Burroughs, Music/Vocal Performance.

Congratulations to the following School of Art students who were awarded the Elizabeth Jones Awards in the Humanities and Arts at the Meeting of the Minds on May 8: Dawn Weleski (BFA F'08) for her study "Entropic Visions of Greek Culture", Ben Bigelow (BFA '08) for his project "Crater Eraser", Clare Hoch (BFA '08) for her contribution to the "Solar Decathalon Greenscape", Laura Miller (BFA '08) for her project "Pittsburgh History through Sculpture". Also, to those who received the Award for Artistic Excellence: Julie Stein's (BFA '08) performance "Egg Ceremony", Theresa Chen's "An Escapist World", and Yvonne Chan's (BFA '08) "Family Tree Paintings". Yvonne also received a SURG grant this semester.

Ben Bigelow (BFA '08) is a recipient of the 2008 Tough Art Residency at the Children's Museum of Pittsburgh, PA. The work from this residency will be exhibited in October 2008.

For information on making a gift to the School of Art, please contact: Sara Mahoney, Special Gift Officer: 412-268-9555, email: mahoney@andrew.cmu.edu.