John W. Olver Design Building
UMass Amherst Campus
551 N Pleasant Street, Amherst MA
doors open 6:00 pm, Presentations begin at 6:30 pm
$5-$15 Suggested Donation
Amherst, MA (September 27, 2024) – The ArtSalon is a dynamic social evening of engaging presentations by established and emerging artists in the Pioneer Valley. The ArtSalon provides an opportunity for artists and designers of all mediums to present their work and ideas. Come meet and join the artists, creators, critics, and collectors in a friendly, social gathering of conversations about the arts in our community. Presenting artists are Justin Kim, Lucia Monge, Sean Sawicki, and Roopa Vasudevan.
This month’s ArtSalonis supported in part by a grant from the Amherst Cultural Council, a local agency which is supported by the Mass Cultural Council, a state agency.
The evening begins at 6:00pm and presentations start at 6:30pm.
Justin Kim: Born in Hartford, CT, Justin Kim received a B.A. from Yale and an MFA from the American University in Washington, D.C. His work is included in public and private collections including Memorial Sloan Kettering, First Fiduciary, and Deep Springs College. Recent awards include a Working Artist Grant and membership at The Elizabeth Foundation in New York where he is based. Recent projects include The Box, an environmental installation in the high desert of California and a public works commission for PS46 in Bayside Queens through the New York Percent for Public Art program. Mr. Kim has taught at Yale, Dartmouth, Smith College, The University of Massachusetts, and Deep Springs College in California.
Lucia Monge: Lucia Monge is a Peruvian artist whose work explores the way humans position ourselves within the natural world and relate to other living beings, especially plants. For the past 13 years she has organized Plantón Móvil, a yearly “walking forest” performance that has led to the creation of public green areas in cities such as Lima, London, New York, and Paris. Other recent projects include a “fungi broadcast” about deforestation in Peru, and sending potato seeds to space as messengers for non-colonial visions of space travel.
Monge has shown her work internationally, including at the Queens Museum, Whitechapel Gallery, Museum of Contemporary Art in Lima, the United Nations Climate Change Conference, and the Havana and Shenzhen biennales. She holds an MFA from Rhode Island School of Design and a BFA from Universidad Católica del Perú. She is a founding member of FIBRA collective and an Assistant Professor of Art at Amherst College.
Sean Sawicki: Sean Sawicki lives in Belchertown, MA and has lived in half a dozen towns throughout Hampden and Hampshire county. He has a BA from UMASS Amherst, where he studied literature and creative writing through a sociopolitical lens. Sean has a Masters of Arts in Teaching from Smith College, and works as a Special Education teacher. He has shown his work previously in Holyoke at the Guided Brick, has read poetry at the Headquarters, and has been a part of solo and group exhibitions at Flywheel in Easthampton.
https://pulpholyoke.com/artists/62-sean-sawicki/overview/
Roopa Vasudevan is a new media artist, computer programmer, and researcher investigating default technical practices and protocols, and how they intersect with larger social and economic power structures. Her work has been exhibited and featured by press outlets internationally, and she has demonstrated a particular and steadfast commitment to artist-led organizations throughout her career. She is a 2024 Processing Foundation Fellow; a 2020 Eyebeam Rapid Response for a Better Digital Future Fellow; a community member at NEW INC, the art and technology incubator at the New Museum (New York), where she was a member of the Art & Code track (in partnership with Rhizome) between 2021 and 2023; and a co-investigator on the Data Fluencies Project, an international research team funded by the Mellon Foundation. Roopa received her PhD in Communication from the University of Pennsylvania in 2023, and an MPS from the Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) at NYU in 2013. She is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Art at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.