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Home , Artists Space, Drawing Center, Frank Gehry, Hara (sculpture), Parkett

Bios: 2014 CHAUTAUQUA FACULTY/VISITING ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE Resident faculty (rf) teach from 1 to 7 weeks during the summer at Chautauqua. Visiting lecturers and faculty (vl, vf) are at Chautauqua for periods ranging from 1 to 5 days.

LISA CORINNE DAVIS: Faculty, Hunter College "Lisa Corinne Davis' paintings occupy a point somewhere between cartooning and cartography, abstraction and figuration. Her carefully articulated images are oddly familiar but essentially ephemeral, visually resonant but also deliberately enigmatic. Davis’ subject has always been the exploration of racial, social, and psychological identity. She has developed her own vocabulary for rendering the world, a lexicon that expresses her personal experience as an African-American woman in the 21st Century, and, by extension, that of an individual in modern society. While subtly avoiding the clichés of special identity politics—if anything, challenging them—Davis provides the viewer with an evocative visual code for deciphering his own environment." (P. Hoban)

Davis received her Master of Fine Arts degree from Hunter College and her Bachelor of Fine Arts from Pratt Institute. Her work has been exhibited nationally including exhibitions at June Kelly Gallery, Marlborough Gallery, Spanierman Modern, the Bronx , and Von Lintel Gallery. She is currently represented by Gerald Peters Gallery New York, NY Galerie Gris in Hudson, NY and The Mayor Gallery, . Her work is included in many collections, including that of The in New York, the J. Paul Getty Museum in , The National Museum of Women in the Arts in , D.C., The Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Davis’s work has been reviewed in Art News, and , to name a few. She has also written several pieces for the Brooklyn Rail. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including The Louis Comfort Tiffany Grant, a National Endowment for the Arts Visual Artist Fellowship, and two New York Foundation for the Arts Visual Arts Fellowships. Her creative work is included in the book, “100 New York Painters”, and her academic practice in “100 Creative Drawing Ideas.” Before joining the faculty at Hunter College in 2002, Davis taught at the Parsons School of Design, the Cooper Union School of Art, and the School of Art.

ANGELA DUFRESNE Faculty, Rhode Island School of Design Dufresne is a painter originally from Connecticut who is based in Brooklyn. She has shown work internationally in exhibitions including Greater New York 2005 at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in New York, the 2005 ARCO Art Fair for Galeria Marta Cervera in Madrid, Miracle on Franklin Street at GV/AS in Brooklyn, and a solo exhibition at the in Los Angeles, CA. She is represented by Monya Rowe Gallery in New York, and CRG Gallery, also in New York. Additional solo exhibitions have been presented at Monya Rowe and CRG Galleries () ; KH Modern Art, Berlin; Kinkead Contemporary, Los Angeles; Galleria Glance, Turin, Italy; Hammer Museum: Hammer Projects, Los Angeles; GV/AS Gallery, Brooklyn; Hudson D. Walker Gallery, Provincetown; Miller Block, Boston; and Gallery Rebelloso, , MN as well as group exhibitions in venues ranging from the Kemper Museum of Art (Kansas City), American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Rose and Jim Kempner Fine Art, to White Columns, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, and Kantor/Feuer, (Los Angeles) to venues in Turin, Moscow, and Vienna. The awards and honors Angela include support/recognition from Yaddo, The National Academy of Arts and Letters, The Fine Arts Work Center at Provincetown, The Center for the Arts in Sausalito, CA and a Jerome Foundation Fellowship.

An alumnus of the Chautauqua School of At herself, Dufresne has been a guest artist teaching or speaking at Kansas City Art Institute, The Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown, Columbia, Brown, SUNY Purchase, Sarah Lawrence, Yale, The Boston Museum School, Vermont Studio School, SVA, University of Richmond, Mills College, Princeton, Pratt, Massachusetts College of Art, UC Davis, Bard and Brandeis. Her work has been included in NY Magazine, ArtSlant, Arts Magazine, The Huffington Post, The Philadelphia Inquirer, , The New York Sun, New American Paintings, Time Out New York, The New York Times, , NY Arts Magazine among many others (rf)

HELEN FREDERICK Faculty, George Mason University Helen Frederick is recognized as a distinguished artist, curator, educator, coordinator of international projects, and as founder of Pyramid Atlantic. As an advocate for and an active participant in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan arts scene, she has served on the directorial boards of alternative art spaces, various local and national boards and national peer- review panels. She has and fulfilled speaking engagements around the world, always emphasizing collaboration across disciplines. Throughout her life her passion for diverse cultures and histories has led her to travel to observe the material cultures of many societies, their skills. and ideas and to make connections among disparate cultural traditions. (rf)

BRIAN GINIEWSKI, Ceramics Faculty, Chautauqua In addition serving as the lead ceramics faculty member in charge of the Joan Lincoln Ceramics Center Kilns at Chautauqua, Giniewski has taught at, Arcadia University, Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, The Clay Studio in Philadelphia, and was Visiting Assistant Professor at Penn State University. He has also been a Digital Design and Fabrication Consultant, a resident artist at the Clay Studio in Philadelphia, and visiting artist at Syracuse University, Marshall University, the University of the Arts, Millersville University, the School of the Art Institute of , a staff resident at the Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts in Maine. His work has been presented in exhibitions at the Clay Studio, Philadelphia; Plug Projects, Kansas City; University of Arkansas Fine Arts Center Gallery; Recitation Gallery, University of Delaware; Nova Scotia Archives; Cranbrook Academy of Art; Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge and many others. His work has been published in New American Paintings, Issue 77, Open Studios Press. MFA Cranbrook Academy of Art and is included in collections including the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Miami, FL ; Collection of the City of Philadelphia; and the Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, MI (rf)

GLENN GOLDBERG: Painting Faculty, Cooper Union and Queens College CUNY Represented by Jason McCoy in New York, Glenn Goldberg’s work is included in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum, (), Metropolitan Museum of Art (NYC), Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles), National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC), Nelson Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, Rose Art Museum, (Waltham, MA) and the National Academy of Arts and Letters. Among more than 30 solo exhibitions are shows at McCoy, Betty Cunningham, Knoedler, David Beitzel, and Willard Galleries (all NYC), Barbara Krakow (Boston), Dart Gallery (Chicago), Addison Ripley (Washington, DC), and Gallery Albrecht (Munich) as well as group shows at Pace Editions, Rosa Esman, Lang & O’Hara, Augustine & Hodes, Jim Kempner, MALCA New York, AC Project Room, Robert Morrison, Germans Van Eyck, (all NYC), Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles), Bellas Art (Santa Fe), Galerie Theuretzbacher, (Vienna), Wetterling Gallery, Stockholm and many others. His work has been written about in The New York Times, Art in America, Cover, Chicago Tribune, Arts Magazine, , and many others. Goldberg has been the recipient of the Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Foundation, among others. In addition to his current position on the faculties of Queens College and Cooper Union, Goldberg has taught previously at American University, Brandeis University, The NY Studio School, Washington State University and many others. MFA City University of New York, Queens College. (rf)

ALISON HALL, Faculty, University of Virginia, Charlottesville Alison currently divides her time between Roanoke, Virginia and Todi, Italy. She taught drawing and painting at Hollins University, where she also served as director of their program in Italy, for eight years and during that time has taken art students to Italy every summer. She is currently teaching at the University of Virginia. Alison’s training as an artist comes from a solid foundation of drawing and painting. Her interest in the history of painting and the constant influence of Italy informs her studio practice. Her teachers' teachers were taught by the ultimate drawers: Mondrian, Giacometti, Helion, and Hofmann to name a few. She believes their spirits persist through her teaching. In 2011 Hall received the prestigious VMFA Fellowship in drawing and the Bethesda Painting Award. Her work has been exhibited at the Taubman Museum of Art (Roanoke), William King Museum (Virginia), Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (Richmond), The University of Virginia, Gallery (New York City), Armory Gallery of the School of the Visual Arts, Virginia Tech (Blacksburg, VA), Edison Place Gallery, Katzen Museum, Watkins Gallery (all Washington, DC), Anonymous Gallery (New York City), Strohl Arts Center (Chautauqua, NY), Demo Gallery (Todi, Italy), Arts Place Gallery (Amsterdam), Sala degli Archi, Corciano, Italy and others. Her work is represented by Joan Hisaoka Gallery Art Advisory, Washington, DC and she has received a professional fellowship in drawing from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, as well as faculty research and travel Grants from Hollins University to travel to Padua, Italy to study Giotto at the Scrovegni Chapel and to curate and install Surfacing, a contemporary exhibition in an urban warehouse space in Roanoke Virginia. Hall has been a visiting artists at the International Studio School of Painting, Drawing and Sculpture in conjunction with the School of the and The University of South Carolina, in Italy. Currently, in addition to her position at The University of Virginia, she is Director/Coordinator and Professor of Art for the new summer study abroad program in Todi, Italy for Patrick Henry Community College. Hall has also taught previously at Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, Chautauqua School of Art, Hollins University and others. (vf)

DON KIMES: Professor of Studio Art/Senior Faculty, Department of Art, American University; Artistic Director, Visual Arts at Chautauqua Institution (VACI) Represented by Denise Bibro Fine Art in New York, Kimes’ multi media work has been presented in more than 150 solo and group exhibitions internationally including shows at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Baltimore Museum of Art, Corcoran Museum, National Academy of Design (NYC), National Academy of Sciences (Washington, DC), Florence International Biennale (Italy), America Haus (Munich), Casa di Cultura (Villahermosa, Mexico), as well as galleries including Bibro, Ammo Artists Space, Lohin-Geduld, Lucky Strike, Stephan Gang, Claudia Carr, Kouros, Prince Street, and Arsenal Galleries (all NYC), Washington Project for the Arts, Constitution Hall, Elizabeth Roberts, Anton, International Art & Artists, American University Katzen Museum of Art, (all Washington, D.C.), Rocca Paolina (Perugia, Italy), XMoenia, International School of Art Gallery, Living Art (all Italy) and many others. He has been head of The studio art program at American University for 18 of the past 26 years. In 1996 he founded the American University’s art in Italy programs (Umbria, Rome, Florence). A 2001 finalist for the position of Chair of the National Endowment for the Arts, Kimes was a recipient of Medici Medals at the 2001 and the 2003 Florence International Biennale of Contemporary Art and has received awards to live and work on the island of Kauai; a grant to spend a year painting near Todi, Italy; US Department of the Interior award to be artist in residence at Yellowstone; artist in residence at SACI in Florence, Italy; the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes in Mexico; Eisenhower Foundation and Chautauqua support to be a Visual Arts representative to the 1986 Jurmala Cultural Exchange in the Soviet Union, and others. He has been a guest artist at Cooper Union, Tyler School of Art, Boston University, Bard, Alfred, Carnegie Mellon, Art Institute, Penn State, Skidmore, Dartmouth, Parsons, Harvard, Vassar, Riga Academy of Art (Latvia), International School of Art (Umbria), Universidad Juarez Autonoma (Mexico), America House (Munich) and many others. At American University he developed a national reputation for their MFA program and led the art program in a campaign that resulted in Washington, DC’s Katzen Arts Center and museum. Kimes has directed the visual arts programs at Chautauqua Institution for the past 29 years, where he was a leading voice in campaigns to build the Strohl and Fowler Kellogg Art Center galleries and renovate the 100 year old Chautauqua School of Art. Previously he was Program Director at the Studio School in New York City, where he also taught for 10 years. (rf)

JULIE LANGSAM, Faculty, Rutgers University Julie Langsam is a painter whose works examines the legacy of within the context of the 21st century. Langsam’s work has been including in numerous solo and group exhibitions during her distinguished career, including shows at Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, Michael Steinberg Fine Art, Frederieke Taylor Gallery, Clementine Gallery, Momenta Art, ES Vandam Gallery, Edward Tyler Nahm fine Art, White Columns, The Drawing Center (all NYC), SmackMellon (Brooklyn), Rome Art Center (Italy), Fondation Mona Bismarck (), CCA Andratx in Mallorca, ; The Neuberger Museum (Purchase, NY), Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art, MOCA Cleveland and many others. Recently Langsam has had solo exhibitions at the Reykjavik Art Gallery in Reykjavik, Iceland; Espai 8 in , Spain; and Gallery Thomas Jaeckel in New York City. Other solo exhibitions include Frederieke Taylor Gallery; Michael Steinberg Fine Art; and Clementine Gallery, all in New York City. Group NY; Caren Golden Fine Art, NYC; Edward Tyler Nahem Fine Art, NYC; Fondation Mona Bismarck, Paris, France; and the Drawing Center, NYC. A recipient of a Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant, Langsam’s work has been written about in numerous catalogue essays as well as articles in publications such as the NY Times, Arts International, Bomb Magazine, ArtNet Magazine, Momenta Art, Art in America; BOMB Magazine; NY Arts International; ArtCritical and others. Her work has been collected by public institutions and private collectors ranging from Frank Gehry to the .

Among other activities she has been curator of such exhibitions as Color as Structure at Frederieke Taylor Gallery in NYC and The Big Bang at SPACES Gallery in Cleveland, OH. Langsam is the former Motto Endowed Chair and Head of Painting at the Cleveland Institute of Art. In 2009 she moved back to NY to teach at Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University where she overhauled the Foundations program and started a new drawing program. She has also previously been a member of the faculties at Pont Avon School of Art (France) and Parsons School of Design, as well as serving as a visiting artist in many programs nationally. (rf)

STANLEY LEWIS: Painting Faculty, New York Studio School Recently the paintings of Lewis have been presented in solo exhibitions at Salander O’Reilly Gallery (who currently represents his work) and Bowery Gallery in New York City, and the Katzen Museum of Art in Washington, DC. He was also a recipient of a 2007 Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship. His work has been written about in ArtNews, Arts Magazine, New Criterion and others. A few of the galleries which have exhibited his work are Green Mountain and Bowery Galleries in New York City, Gross McCleaf Gallery in Philadelphia, the Jersey City Museum, Dorry Gates Gallery in Kansas City, Marsha Mateyka and Watkins Gallery in Washington, D.C. and the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in New York City. As a highly respected teacher and artist, Lewis has been a guest artist in dozens of programs nationally, among them Yale University, the Yale/Norfolk summer program, Boston University, Minneapolis College of Art, the New York Studio School, the Vermont Studio Center, the University of Iowa and many others. In addition to the graduate and undergraduate programs at American University, where Lewis taught for 15 years, he has been a member of the full time faculties of such respected schools as Smith College and Kansas City Art Institute, where he taught for 17 years. He studied at Yale University (MFA, BFA) and Wesleyan College (BA), as well as in Paris. Lewis has been teaching at Chautauqua for the past 24 years. He is represented by Betty Cunningham Gallery in New York City. MFA Yale. (rf)

TOM RANESES, Master Printmaker, former faculty, American University Printmaker in residence Tom Raneses is a master printer having developed editions for nationally known artists. He taught drawing and printmaking for ten years at American University in Washington, D.C. In addition to his teaching career, Tom has worked as an exhibits specialist at the National Museum of American Art of the in Washington, D.C. and has been the Assistant Director and Curator of the American University Watkins Collection (The Watkins Collection includes more than 4,000 works of art including such artists as Goya, Picasso, de Chirico, Milton Avery, Kenneth Noland, , and many others). He studied with Allan Feltus, Stephen Pace, Robert D’Arista, Helen Herzburn and apprenticed in Spoleto, Italy with painter Franco Troiani. Additionally he studied paper conservation at the National School of Conservation, Restoration, and Museography, in Mexico. Raneses has had solo and group exhibitions in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, in the Midwest and in Italy. His awards have included the Elizabeth Van Swinderin Award, Smithsonian Institution Merit Award, Phi Kappa Phi national honor society, several artist in residence programs, and a grant from the D.C. Commission for the Arts among others. Raneses will be facilitating the print studio for advanced students and helping less experienced students gain experience in various printmaking methods. (rf)

AMBER SCOON, Founding Director, International Center for Art and Philosophy at the American Academy in Rome and Chautauqua Institution; Faculty, Texas A & M University Scoon received her Ph.D. in Media and communications from the European Graduate School in Sas Fee, Switzerland with and emphasis on Contemporary Art. She received her MFA from the American University graduate program in Italy (Rome and Umbria) and her B.A. from . Author of the book Quantum Art, Scoon has previously taught at Syracuse University, served as Co-Program Director of the American University Art in Italy program in Umbria, and was a Visiting Professor at the University of Moscow in Sevastpool, Ukraine . Her work has been included in numerous exhibitions internationally, a few of which include Denise Bibro (New York City); Gallery 25 (Boston); Contini Sculpture Park, La’ambasciata de Marte (Florence, Italy), Artemisia, Castello Pieve, (Perugia, Italy); Scope Biennale (Switzerland), Sintra, Lugar Cumum, and Art e Ideias (all Portugal), Galerya Arta (Sevastapool, Ukraine), Galeria Pyramide, Galleria il Labirinto (both Rome) and many others. Scoon has received awards including a John Berger Fellowship at the European Graduate School, OBRAS Studio Grant in Portugal, National Endowment for the Arts, Bau Institute in Otranta, Italy, and a New York University President’s award for Volunteer and Community Service. Scoon was a volunteer recovery worker for most of the fall semester, 2001 at Ground Zero (site of the former World Trade Center) in New York City. (rf)

JAMES SHAM: Assistant Professor of Sculpture, George Washington University Visiting Assistant Professor and Murchison Research Fellow, University of Texas at Austin Professor Sham has exhibited in a broad range of venues among them: the Arthouse at Jones Center, Austin TX, the International Video Fair, Tate Modern, London UK, Rudolph Projects, Houston TX, the Asian Arts Initiative, Philadelphia PA, Kunstprojects, Berlin Germany, the European Cable Network Broadcast (Germany and France), Kim Foster Gallery, New York NY, Lugar de Proyectos, Caguas Puerto Rico, Appetite Gallery, Buenos Aires Argentina, and Punch Gallery, WA. His videowork has been published in DVD periodicals including "Strangely Funny" Aspect-EZ DVD 1 2010, and Buffet DVD Issue 1 Fall 2009. In addition, Professor Sham has completed several residency programs including the Core Program, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston TX, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Skowhegan ME, Art Omi International Artist Residency, Ghent NY, and the James Rosenquist Artist Residency, North Dakota State University, Fargo ND. Professor Sham teaches Sculpture at all levels as well as Critical Practices. (rf)

ROBERT STORR: Dean, Yale School of Art; Consulting Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art Painter Robert Storr was curator in the Department of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, from 1990 to 2002, where he organized exhibitions on Elizabeth Murray, , Max Beckmann, Tony Smith, and Robert Ryman, in addition to coordinating the Projects series from 1990 to 2000. He was also the commissioner of the 2007 Venice Biennale, the first American invited to assume that position. In 2002 he was named the first Rosalie Solow Professor of Modern Art at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. Mr. Storr has also taught at the CUNY graduate center and the Bard Center for Curatorial Studies as well as the Rhode Island School of Design, Tyler School of Art, New York Studio School, and , and has been a frequent lecturer in this country and abroad. He has been a contributing editor at Art in America since 1981 and writes frequently for Artforum, Parkett, Art Press (Paris), and Frieze (London). He has written numerous catalogs, articles, and books, including Philip Guston (Abbeville, 1986), Chuck Close (with Lisa Lyons, Rizzoli, 1987), and the forthcoming Intimate Geometries: The Work and Life of . Among his many honors he has received a Penny McCall Foundation Grant for painting, a Norton Foundation Curator Grant, and honorary doctorates from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Maine College of Art, as well as awards from the American Chapter of the International Association of Art Critics, a special AICA award for Distinguished Contribution to the Field of Art Criticism, an ICI Curatorial Award, and the Lawrence A. Fleischman Award for Scholarly Excellence in the Field of American Art History from the Smithsonian Institution’s Archives of American Art. In 2000 the French Ministry of Culture presented him with the medal of Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres. He is also currently Consulting Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Mr. Storr was appointed professor of painting/printmaking and dean of the School of Art in 2006. Mr. Storr received a B.A. from Swarthmore College in 1972 and an M.F.A. from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1978. (rf)

DANNIELLE TEGEDER: Studio Faculty, City University of New York, Lehman College Dannielle Tegeder earned her BFA from the State University of New York at Purchase and her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Tegeder's work is mainly abstract paintings and drawings and in recent years has expanded to include installation, wall drawings, and sound. She has had solo gallery exhibitions, both nationally and internationally in Paris, Houston, Los Angeles, Berlin, Chicago, and New York. She has participated in numerous group exhibitions at various such as PS1/MoMA, The of Contemporary Art, The Brooklyn Museum of Art, and Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. Last year she had a major museum survey Dannielle Tegeder: Painting in the Extended Field at the Wellin Museum of Art, at Hamilton College. A fully illustrated hardcover catalog will accompany the exhibition with essays by Barry Schwabsky, and Claire Gilman, the curator from the Drawing Center in NYC. Tegeder has been the recipient of many residencies and grants, including Yaddo, the Pollock- Krasner Foundation, Triangle Arts Association, SmackMellon Studio Program, and the Marie Walsh Sharpe Studio Fellowship. In 2011, she was an artist in residence on Governor's Island as part of the Lower Cultural Council's Swing Space program. She has been a visiting artist at Cornell University, RISD, Pratt Institute, San Francisco Art Institute, , Purchase College, Maryland Institute College of Art, and others. Her work is in the collections of a number of museums including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, and the Weatherspoon Art Museum at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. (rf)

LEE TRIBE: Sculpture Faculty NY Studio School Sculptor Lee Tribe learned about welding as an apprentice & journeyman boilermaker/plater on the London Docks, England. He is currently represented by Robert Steele in New York City, He has also had one person exhibitions at J.J. Brookings (California); Robert Morrison Gallery (NYC) and Victoria Munroe Gallery (NYC and Boston). Other exhibitions include Weatherspoon Art Gallery, NC; The Storm King Sculpture Center, NY; the Arts Council of Great Britain; RVS Fine Art (Southampton, NY), Bingham Kurts Gallery (Memphis); Charles Plohn Gallery (NYC); Museum of Art Dakar(Senegal);Phillipe Staib gallery (NYC); Gallerie International Arts Quinta do Lago Almasil (Portugal); Hunts Point Sculpture Park (Bronx, NY); Lisa Kurtz (Memphis); JJ Brookings Gallery (San Jose, CA); Madelaine Carter Fine Arts (Boston) and others. Tribe is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in sculpture and has also received a Barnett Newman Scholarship, Pollock-Krasner Fellowship, an Ingram Merrill Sculpture award and was the winner of the International Sculpture Center award in Bronze casting. Tribe received his formal art education at the New York Studio School, the Birmingham School of Art (England) and St. Martin’s School of Art, (England). He is currently on the faculty of the New York Studio School and additional teaching experience includes several previous appointments at Chautauqua, , and he served at Sculpture Department Head at Bennington College, VT, from 1985 - 1989. (rf)

SAM VAN AKEN: Sculpture Faculty Syracuse University Sam Van Aken's work has been recognized nationally and internationally since the mid-1990's for exposing and perceptions on such diverse topics as genetic engineering and the psychological impact of media. Immediately following his graduation from Slippery Rock University in 1994 with degrees in communication theory and art, Van Aken lived and worked in under the auspices of the Foundation and the United States Information Agency. Working with dissident artists under the former communist regime, his work was shaped by the belief that art provides an alternative message, view, and concept of the world. Returning after several years in Europe, Van Aken received his MFA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2001. Mining our media-saturated and technologically immersed culture for his subject matter, Sam Van Aken's art is staged between the false realities we come to inhabit through media and technology and the lived reality we experience apart from it. Taking the form of multi-media installations and environments his work explores such subject matter as documentation and fiction, authenticity and imitation, artifice and nature, selfhood and impersonation. Avoiding material specificity and intuitively allowing idea to search for new forms, his work has grown to employ such elements as sculpture, video, performance, installation, and interactive environments. Through this his work transcends immediate encounter to become part of our own everyday thoughts as we engage the same media and technology immersed culture his work explores. MFA University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. (rf)