Breanne Trammell is a multi-disciplinary artist with a background in printmaking. Her practice is fluid and project-specific as she pivots between installation, sculpture, publishing, performance, curatorial projects, and collaborative making. Her studio work is a playful constellation of diaristic sculptural objects and prints that explore the confluence of high and low brow, and shares commonplace experiences that are mined from the everyday and her personal history. Using humor and playful formalism, Breanne subverts traditional printmaking techniques to elevate low and ubiquitous objects, printed matter, and digital ephemera. Her publishing imprint Teachers Lounge loosely operates as a forum to explore subversive topics and reveal hidden histories related to education, activism, politics, sports, and visual culture. Breanne’s work has been widely exhibited and she has been an artist-in-residence at the Women’s Studio Workshop, Kala Institute, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, Ox-Bow School of Art, Endless Editions, among others. Breanne received her MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and is an Assistant Professor of Fine Arts at the University of Cincinnati.

Mary Banas develops conceptual and informed designs for brands, institutions, and social practices with her independent creative practice YES IS MORE which includes design, visual research, and teaching.

Mary has designed for and with organizations and companies including COLLINS, Designer Fund, Dolby Labs, Honor, Mode Analytics, Postmates, Segment, and WBUR Boston. In 2018 she designed Japanese-American singer-songwriter Mitski’s album Be The Cowboy which was nominated in the “Best Recording Package” category for the 61st annual Grammy Awards.

She was a resident for Design Inquiry, Maine in 2016 where she developed work investigating the possibilities and limitations of line, both as a form and concept, and in 2018 with a close-read of Sol LeWitt’s 1981 artist book Autobiography resulting in Alternative Texts: What Are You Reading? which launched at Limited Edition Gallery inside John McNeil Studio in Berkeley, CA.

Mary has taught graphic design since 2009, notably as Visiting Assistant Professor in Residence at the University of Connecticut, Rhode Island School of Design, the University of Bridgeport, as well as leading design workshops for the Center for Creative Solutions (Vermont), Dolby Labs (San Francisco), OTIS College of Art and Design (Los Angeles), and the Berkeley Art Museum + Pacific Film Archive (Berkeley). She has been a visiting critic at MICA and Pratt Institute.

BFA, University of Connecticut
MFA, Rhode Island School of Design

Congratulations to Prof. Janet Pritchard for being awarded a 2019 Guggenheim Fellowship. Each year, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation awards roughly 175 fellowships to select individuals from a pool of over 3,000 applicants. These fellowships are intended to recognize individuals that express an exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts.

Janet’s work as a landscape photographer is exhibited in galleries and museums throughout the United States, as well as in the United Kingdom. Her photography is also a part of eight prestigious permanent collections in venues both here and the U.K. Her current project, More than a River: the Connecticut River Watershed, is expected to continue for many years. It involves photographing the Connecticut River landscape and contextualizing it as a complex set of interconnected systems where the land and riverscape impact the lives of the people who call it home and vice versa. Her work seeks out the intersection of nature and culture. The Guggenheim Fellowship will provide her with the opportunity to better understand the ecological concerns throughout the watershed and delve deeper into a few significant topics that she can weave into the larger story she will be telling through her work.

Please join us for the opening reception of Anonymous Is A Woman, reflections on the erasure and representation of the female body through history by Isabella Saraceni ’19 (Studio Art, SFA).  The reception will be held on Monday, April 15, 2019 from 6:00pm-8:00pm in VAIS Gallery, Art Building Room 109. This event is open to the University community and the general public. The show will run from April 15th – April 19th. Click here to learn more about the artist. This project is funded by a UConn IDEA Grant.

The annual Scholarship Show on Wednesday, April 3^rd, was a success! There were 22 individual named scholarships with 24 recipients. Students submitted their artwork and were chosen by a jury of professional artists to be displayed in the Scholarship Show. Awards winning pieces were chosen from the juried pieces. There were also 56 recipients of the Fine Arts Talent Scholarship which is awarded based on academic achievement and GPA, and did not require any submission of work. The winning pieces are on display in the Arena Gallery, which is where the ceremony took place. Anne D’Alleva, Dean of the School of Fine Arts, presented the Dean’s Scholarship and Professors Alison Paul and Mark Zurolo announced remaining scholarship recipients.

Art + Feminism Wikipedia Edit-a-thon hopes to bring more coverage of gender, feminism, and the arts on Wikipedia. The Art + Feminism Edit-a-thon will be taking place on Monday, April 1 from 4 to 7 p.m. in the Greenhouse Studios and the Humanities Institute, located in the Babbidge Library. If you are at the Hartford Campus, it will take place from 4 to 7 p.m. in HTB 223 Computer Lab.

Read more about the Art + Feminism Wikipedia Edit-a-thon here

Join us for the Opening Reception of Kenny Glazer’s solo exhibition, Moving Day, made possible by the IDEA grant. The reception will be held on April 1st, 2019, from 6:00-8:00 p.m., in the VAIS Gallery in the Art Building, room 109.

Be sure to check out Mei Buzzell’s show “Out of Sight” on March 11th at 6:30 in the VAIS Gallery!