Italo Scanga Visiting Artist Fund
The Italo Scanga Visiting Artist Fund was established in 2005 with a donation from URI Art Department alumna Katherine Scanga and the Italo Scanga Foundation. Italo Scanga was an internationally renowned sculptor who taught for many years at UC-San Diego. For further information on the Italo Scanga Foundation see http://www.italoscanga.org. The purpose of the fund is to bring an artist in to the department for a two-day residency. During their stay each artist makes a public presentation of their work and then spends time with students in class, participating in discussions, critiques or one-on-one with individual students.
Spring 2006
Kurt Ralske, a NYC-based video artist, composer and programmer, was the first visiting artist brought to the URI Art Department with the Italo Scanga Visiting Artists Fund. Ralske works in a variety of practices including improvised audio-visual performance, installations, digital print media, and software art. He has performed and exhibited at museums, galleries and theaters throughout Europe, Canada and the US, including the Guggenheim Bilbao, Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art and the Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art. The New York Times has praised his "compelling, ingenious alliance of sound and motion" and "technological wizardry."Ralske's work received First prize at the 2003 Transmediale International Media Art Festival in Berlin, as a member of the real-time video improvisation ensemble 242.pilots. He is also the author, programmer of Auvi (http://auv-i.de), a software environment for creating custom real-time video programs that is in use by video artists in over 22 countries. While at URI he demonstrated this software with student collaboration.
Fall 2006
Gregory Coates visited the department in the Fall of 2006. He did informal critiques with students in various classes from Art 101 to Senior Seminar. The Senior class videotaped an interview with Greg and faculty member Bob Dilworth.Greg Coates embodies the qualities and excitement of the contemporary abstract painter. Spending most of his career in New York City, he has formulated a rich body of work centered on refiguring and redefining found and fabricated materials that are subsequently pigmented and attached to wall panels. The result is highly innovative. Using such materials as rubber, wood, metal, plastic, and glass Coates explore provocative and difficult social issues that have a remarkably urban tenor and flavor.
He has exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions in New York, London, Berlin, and Munich. Awards include the Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant, the Pollack-Krasner Grant, the New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship, and the Edward Bannister Society's Artistic Achievement Award. He has been an Artist-in-Residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Kunsthaus Tacheles in Berlin, and the International Artist-Workshop in Capetown, South Africa.
Spring 2007
Holly Laws is a Providence based artist whose work runs the gamut from sculpture to theater design. She holds degrees in Sculpture from Virginia Commonwealth University (BFA magna cum laude) and Tyler School of Art, Temple University (MFA). She has received fellowships from the Rhode Island State Council of the Arts in 2004 and 2000. In 2004 she received Rhode Island Council of the Arts Grant for The Dog Tag Project.Laws makes objects using techniques that are labor-intensive, and time consuming, with meticulous attention to detail. Some of these techniques have traditionally been associated with women's work; some with a specific trade or craft as opposed to fine art. Painstaking process, the attendant precision and a focus on detail, form the backbone of her work.
Laws' approach to her work is informed by a love of experimentation with all manner of materials and means of production. Her experience is wide and varied. Laws spent two years in Oklahoma studying cowboy boot making techniques, and continue to add what one might consider non-traditional materials and techniques to her repertoire. For many years, the central vehicle of Laws' work has been the human figure, with a focus on fragments of bodies: legs, teeth, breasts, incomplete torsos, the items of clothing that cover particular parts - all surrogates for a self. For the last several years, Laws has been working on an interactive public art project, the DogTag Project that takes art out of the gallery context and places it in the hands of the people.
Department Chair
Ronald Onorato
Office Hours:
Monday 10:30pm to 12m
Tuesday/Thursday 2pm to 3pm
Or by appointment
FAC 207
News and Events
A&AH 2009-2010 Newsletter (PDF)
