Visiting Artist Residency: February 25 - March 1
Conversation with Artist: October 19, 2pm Theater

Artist Biography
Roberley Bell spent her childhood in Latin America and Southeast Asia, before returning to the United States to attend the University of Massachusetts and State University of New York at Alfred from where she holds an MFA in Sculpture. Bell is the recipient of many grants and fellowships including the New York Foundation for the Arts, a Pollock Krasner Fellowship, a Fulbright to the Netherlands and several residency awards including the International Studio Program, NYC and most recently a residency at the Stadt Kunstlerhaus, Salzburg, Austria. Bell’s work has been exhibited in both one person and group exhibitions, nationally and internationally. Her solo exhibitions include, Black and White Gallery, Brooklyn, Paul Petro Gallery, Toronto, ADA Gallery, Richmond and Pentimenti Gallery, Philadelphia. Group exhibitions include the State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Wave Hill and several Art Fairs. Over the past two decades She has created numerous public projects, both temporary and permanent. Her most recent permanent project for Costa Lopez Park in Cambridge, MA will be installed summer 2008. Bell has completed public site projects in Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Chicago and New York.

Her work for the past decade has addressed concerns related to the construct of landscape and looks at the nature of nature. She creates both exterior garden projects and interior discrete objects. The new flower Blob series are referenced by blob design. A current trend in design where forms adopt an organic structure made possible only through computer-aided design. The Flower Blobs sculptures reveal themselves as natural forms, though they are in fact nothing that exists in nature. The Flower Blobs become a miniature version – if not a souvenir – of our extreme control of the landscape. Bell’s public garden projects express a continuing interest in gardens and the built American landscape, examining our relationship to “landscape’” that juxtaposes the real with the artificial.

Bell makes her home in a rural community in Upstate New York. She is a professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology, where she teaches courses on Public Art and Public Space.

Artist Statement
For the past few years Roberley Bell has been working on a sculpture series, Flower Blobs.

The Flower Blob forms are referenced by blob design. A current trend in design where forms adopt an organic structure that is made possible only through computer-aided design. The Flower Blobs sculptures reveal themselves as natural forms, though they are in fact nothing that exists in nature. The Flower Blob sculptures continue to explore the spills of my landscape projects, the space where the artificial meets the real. The Flower Blobs become a miniature version – if not a souvenir – of our extreme control of the landscape. My projects both interior and exterior question the nature of nature.

Proposal.
I would like to experiment with translating my Flower Blob forms into glass or perhaps only partially glass, that is the base form and perhaps some casting of flowers, birds and insects. This is for me the opportunity to move outside of my current mode of working and to investigate the possibilities of what happens when a new material and process is introduced in to the current conceptually framework of my creative practice. It is of course both the fluidity and the transparency of the material that I am intrigued by as it relates to my current body of work.

The Flower Blob sculptures are informed by blob architecture. Their forms are in fact nothing in nature, though the sculptures reveal themselves as natural forms. 

The Flower Blobs continue to explore the spills of my landscape projects, the space where the artificial meets the real. In these sculptures the dialogue between the real and the artificial extends to their surfaces covered with plastic flowers and novelty birds. The Flower Blobs become a miniature version if not a souvenir of our extreme control of the landscape. My projects play what is real against what is not to the point where even nature is uncertain. It is my intent to employ our imagination and our senses even with the artifice. Does the flower give off scent? Is the bird singing? Is the sky reflected? My sculptures are a play on and with nature.