How has Covid-19 impacted your artistic practice?

Drawing of a color wheel

WHEN
Tuesday, May 25, 2021
12:00-1:30 p.m. PDT

LOCATION
Online
Zoom

PRICE
Free


 

Check out this video to watch the How has Covid-19 impacted your artistic practice?.

Brought to you by the Western Gallery and WWU Art & Art History Department in partnership with the WWU Alumni Association

WWU Alumni Association is proud to present a Spring program in collaboration with the Western Gallery to connect current and past art, art history, and design students centered on the question, ““How has Covid-19 impacted your artistic practice?”

The pandemic has impacted us all. But more specifically, as a graduate in the arts, how has your life professionally and creatively shifted over the past year? At WWU the 2021 BFA class has had to shift and navigate their program in an entirely new fashion due to Covid restrictions. Their culminating exhibition at the Western Gallery, Material Mind, opens May 20th.

This virtual panel seeks to bring together the varying WWU voices of current and recent graduates from Bachelor of Fine Arts program to share how 2020 has impacted their professional career or artistic practice. Artist and Associate Professor of Time-Based Art Chris Vargas will be moderating the main discussion of this event and audience participation will also be employed to cultivate a rich conversation on the topic.

Debbi Kenote

Debbi Kenote ('14)

Speaker

Debbi Kenote, b. 1991 is a New York based artist who received her BFA from Western Washington University in 2014 and her MFA from Brooklyn College in 2016. She has shown her work throughout the U.S. including Page Bond Gallery, Richmond, VA, Peekskill Project, Peekskill, NY, Deanna Evans Projects, NYC, NY and Front Room Gallery, NYC, NY. In 2019 she had her first solo exhibition at the Canvas by Querencia Studio in Brooklyn, New York. Kenote’s work has been published through Art of Choice and Page Bond Gallery. Kenote has been an artist in residence at the Vermont Studio CenterDNA ResidencyNes Artist Residency, and CAI Projects. She has curated exhibitions at Open House and the 2018 and 2019 SPRING/BREAK Art Show.

Sheldon Sabbatini

Sheldon Sabbatini (‘03)

Speaker

Sheldon Sabbatini is a Commercial and Advertising photographer based in Portland, OR.  He is a 2003 WWU Graduate earning a BFA - Studio Art (Photography). Sheldon’s clients include Nike, Adidas, Polartec/Polarfleece, Dovetail Workwear, Camelbak and many more.  Sheldon was recently Selected for American Photography’s AP36 photography annual. You can view his work at www.sabfoto.com or www.instagram.com/sab_himself.

Quinton Maldonado

Quinton Maldonado (‘15)

Speaker

Quinton Maldonado is a multi-disciplinary artist based in Philadelphia, PA. His work comments on ideas of alienation, technology, and the creation of the self. He graduated from Western Washington University in 2015 with a BFA in Photography, and from the Tyler School of Art with an MFA in Photography in 2020.

Shannon DeLurio

Shannon DeLurio (‘20)

Speaker

Born in the mid-90s in Northern California, Shannon DeLurio grew up interested in the eccentric details of each individuals’ visual and emotional experience. She is intrigued by our varying mental head-spaces. Throughout her artistic career, creating has served as a therapeutic outlet for DeLurio's worrisome mind and past traumas. While exploring with any mark-making tool, her emotions become more clear as they reach the surface. After transplanting to Bellingham, Washington in 2014, DeLurio began to pursue her passion for art in the context of higher education. She has experience with drawing, printmaking, and mixed media. Her current practice utilizes oil painting. In the spring of 2020, Shannon DeLurio completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Western Washington University.

Nicole Sletta

Nicole Sletta (‘21)

Speaker

Born in Park City, Utah, Nicole Sletta, has been making art a since she was a child. She blends personal experience and emotions with textiles and pop culture. Moving to Bellingham to pursue a Bachelors in Fine Arts at Western Washington University, Nicole was inspired by the nature and mystic of the Pacific Northwest, including the local cryptid, the Sasquatch. In her senior year Nicole has evolved into interactive installation art while taking advantage of the studio resources has allowed her to scale up her creations and expand her reach. Her use of textiles as a stand in for fur and natural materials creates a snapshot that does not wilt or change. Nicole explores ideas of comfort, isolation, and coping mechanisms in her current works.

Chris Vargas

Chris Vargas

Moderator

Chris E. Vargas is a video maker, interdisciplinary, and Associate Professor of Art at Western Washington University. Vargas is Executive Director of MOTHA, the Museum of Transgender History & Art, a critical and conceptual arts & history institution highlighting the contributions of trans art to the cultural and political landscape.

Questions and Accommodations

Tami Landis, Museum Educator at the Western Gallery, is the coordinator for this event. Feel free to email tami.landis@wwu.edu or call (360) 650-3939 if you have any questions or comments.

There will be auto-captions available for this event. To request closed captions, please mark the request on the registration form. Advance notice of three days to one week is appreciated.