IU South Bend professor's work in two prestigious exhibitions
An Indiana University South Bend professor's work will be featured in two prestigious juried exhibitions this year and is featured among the more than 1,200 artists competing online for a $250,000 prize.
"Gaia" is part of several exhibits across the country. IU South Bend Associate Professor of Fine Arts Dora Natella created the work.
Dora Natella, associate professor of Fine Arts at IU South Bend, will have her bronze relief titled "Gaia" included in the 113th Annual Open Exhibition of the Catherine Lorillard Wolfe Art Club this month and as part of the Performance in Sculpture project presented by the National Sculpture Society and the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center (TBPAC) from October through September 2010.
The 113th Annual Open Exhibition taking place at the National Art Club in New York City displays works by women artists all over the United States. The exhibition is open from today (Oct. 1) through Oct. 23. The Catherine Lorillard Wolfe Art Club is a women's art club founded in 1896 in honor of Wolfe, who was a prominent New York philanthropist and art collector. She was the only woman among the 106 founders of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
"Gaia" will then travel to Florida as part of an 11-piece sculpture exhibition. In partnership with the New York-based National Sculpture Society, the pre-eminent organization for sculptors, TBPAC presents an exhibition as part of the 2009-10 programming season. Eleven pieces (from 177 entries) will be displayed in the Ruth Silbiger lobby of Carol Morsani Hall at TBPAC beginning this month.
"Gaia" is gaining some popularity, Natella said. It has been recently accepted in a group exhibition titled: "Interpretations of the figure 2009" at the University of Indianapolis.
Also, a maquette of the 10-foot tall "Gaia" is part of ArtPrize, an exhibit in downtown Grand Rapids, Mich. that runs from Sept. 23 to Oct. 10. "Gaia" is displayed outdoors in Grand Rapids at the corner of Lyon and Ottawa on the property of Fifth Third Bank, the venue that is sponsoring Natella. The winner of ArtPrize receives $250,000, and the top 10 artists will receive a prize. There is not an official curator or jury for the competition. The winner is decided by votes cast on the Web site (anyone can register and vote). To vote for Natella, visit http://www.artprize.org/artist/id/3003.
Natella was born in Venezuela to an Italian family and was raised and educated in Italy. She moved to the United States in 1980 to pursue advanced studies in bronze casting techniques and to gain expose to a new culture -- one less inhibited by the authority of history.
In 1986, Natella earned an MFA in sculpture at Western Michigan University, and she taught sculpture, life drawing, two- and three-dimensional design there for six years. In 1992, she was hired as the Sculpture Area Coordinator at IU Bloomington.
"At the time my research and creative work gradually became centered on the female figure," Natella said. "My sculptural installations sparked interest in their statement and cross-cultural references to Latino women's experiences and generated topical dialogue of universal women's issues."
In 1997, she was awarded a teaching/research Fulbright Award, which allowed her to spend one year in the Andes of Venezuela and interact with the foremost figurative artists and art critics in Venezuela at that time, such as Peran Ermini, Cornelis Zitman, Oswaldo Vigas, Manuel de la Fuente and others. The goal of her research was "to foster cultural ties between Venezuela, my country of origin, and the U.S. . . . Furthermore, I had the opportunity to contribute to the ongoing efforts of curriculum revision and program development at the newly established School of Visual Arts at the University of the Andes in Merida, Venezuela."
At the end of 2000, she started teaching part-time to dedicate more time to work as an independent artist. Her proposal for an 11-foot bronze sculpture titled "Gaia" was juried into "Pier Walk 2000," the world's largest international outdoor sculpture exhibition, set on Chicago's historic Navy Pier.
"'Gaia' in Greek mythology is the personification of the earth," Natella writes. "This bronze is a massive rendering of a split woman figure, a deep gash down one of the two faces. A tangle of willow roots and branches amass at the figure's feet, rise through her torso and extend beyond her head. The sculpture is a tribute to the earth mother goddess and a symbol of the current state of the planet. With this sculpture I wish to inspire people to have more awareness of the earth's fragility."
"My artwork addresses fundamental aspects of my own experiences as a woman. These experiences inform the conceptual essence and formal qualities of the work," Natella adds. "Having more than one place I call home has given me a broad perspective about people, their cultures and their experiences. Having artistic roots in both Europe and the Americas has been a key to my identity as an artist, as I have approached a contemporary style of sculpture from a classical background."
Natella has been teaching at IU South Bend since 2004. In addition to her work in program and curriculum development at IU South Bend, she has also been successful at exhibiting locally, nationally and internationally.
For more information about Natella, visit http://www.doranatella.us and for more details on IU South Bend's Ernestine M. Raclin School of the Arts, visit http://www.iusb.edu/~sbarts/. For more information about the exhibit at the Tampa Bay Performing Art Center, visit http://www.tbpac.org/sculpture/index.asp.
To vote for Natella in the Artprize competition, visit http://www.artprize.org/artist/id/3003.
