The amazingly versatile Terry Allen and maverick Italian artist Paolo Piscitelli are the Texas A&M College of Architecture’s artists in residence for spring 2008.
Students can work with Allen and Piscitelli on an independent study basis as one-hour credit courses. Allen comes to campus from March 24-April 29 and Piscitelli will teach Feb. 18 - March 21.
Allen is a recording and conceptual artist whose creativity is impossible to categorize. A question he asks about his critically acclaimed music is a perfect example. “People tell me it’s country music, and I ask: Which country?”
On the Artcyclopedia website, however, he’s listed as an American sculptor.
Then, Allen pops up in the New American Radio website as the writer, director and producer of “Dugout,” an audio drama that was presented on National Public Radio in 1994.
His drawings in pastel, graphite and other media are on the Web too.
“He’s one of the most creative people I’ve ever met,” said Mary Saslow, a senior lecturer with the Department of Architecture and chair of the 2007 Artists in Residence program. “He’s a perfect choice,” she said, “to show students the process of creation, how you find ideas, and explore possibilities.”
Allen’s session here is tentatively called “Ideas, Looking For a Source.” He said the workshop will investigate “where ideas come from and how they might be developed into making a work of art. Using notebooks, discussion, and possibly field trips, the primary focus will be on generating concepts, not finished work,” he said. “It is open to any visual artist, writer, musician, actor, etcetera, who might wish to explore areas they may not have explored before.” In January, Allen’s work-in-progress multimedia theater piece, “Ghost Ship Rodez,” was presented at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art.
Paolo Piscitelli returns to the College of Architecture this spring as a visiting artist. Born in Venaria, Italy, he is one of a small number of Italian artists involved in overturning the logic of sculpture as the image of an object designed for visual consumption.
With the aid of digital technologies, he demolishes the usual distinctions among different media to connect the experience of seeing and hearing, considering the physical and emotional memory, and the context and possibility, of each environment.
The sensory revelation in his sculpture works to open intensified spaces, oriented to amplify the sculpture’s meaning analytically and emotionally. To do this he studies and often calls upon experts in the fields of science, physics, sound, architecture and philosophy.
Since Piscitelli’s debut solo exhibition in 1996, “Nuovi Arrivi,” at Galleria San Filippo, Torino, he has exhibited widely throughout Europe. He has participated in one-man exhibitions at Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Torino; Tucci Russo Studio per l’Arte Contemporanea, Artissima 10, Torino, and Galerie Paolo Boselli, Brussels.
He lives and works in New York and Turin, Italy.
