Tag Archives: David Rufo

Sweet Science Series – Science in Art: It’s More than Pretty Pictures

Thursday, 14 September 2017, 5:30 – 7:30 p.m.

Milton J Rubenstein Museum of Science & Technology – Syracuse, NY


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Artists Anita Welych, Kim Waale, and David Rufo will present Science in Art: It’s More than Pretty Pictures, a talk about artists who create works that makes a statement about science, math, and the natural world, as part of the Technology Alliance of Central New York’s 2017-2018 Sweet Science Series.

People interested in learning more about science in art are invited to attend the free Sweet Science Series presentation on Thursday, Sept. 14, from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. in the Space Gallery meeting room at the Museum of Science & Technology in Syracuse’s Armory Square. Admission is free and open to the public. Light snacks will be served. Walk-ins are welcome, but we ask that people RSVP by emailing sweet.science@tacny.org by Sept. 12, 2017.

Presenters

Anita Welych is a mixed-media artist who studied painting at Cornell University, Syracuse University and the Universidad Nacional in Bogotá, Colombia. Her paintings, artist’s books, collages and installations have been exhibited nationally and internationally. She currently teaches in the Studio Art BFA program at Cazenovia College. She has received two Fulbright Grants to Colombia to study, teach, and lecture at various universities across the country. Welych’s current work is an ongoing project exploring the life history of North American bird species that have become extinct or critically endangered. Each work references specific species to convey the pain and futility of our inadequate human response to environmental crises. As the planet faces the increasing threats of global environmental degradation, this work serves as either an elegy or a call to action.

Kim Waale, professor of art, has taught art at Cazenovia College since 1988. She is an accomplished artist with many national and international exhibitions over the past two decades, and has been an artist-in- residence creating sculptural installations in Wales, Spain, Macedonia, Ecuador and within the United States. Waale has also written and been featured in books and articles. Waale makes site-based installations that simulate nature – whimsical fictions, slippages between reality and artifice. Her installations are made of dumb materials and yet they’re plastic sublimes – romantic natural hybrids. The unnatural materials used to construct these artificial landscapes are readily evident: ordinary plastic wrap, rubber, and Styrofoam. By making these materials self evident, the illusion of landscape disintegrates even as it is being created.

David Rufo holds a Ph.D. in Teaching and Curriculum with a specialization in Art Education at Syracuse University. He has worked as a general elementary classroom teacher and as an instructor at Syracuse University. His current academic research examines the way children’s self-initiated creativity is informed by student agency in various educational contexts and has published articles in peer-reviewed journals, including Art Education, Teaching Artist Journal, and the STEAM Journal. Rufo’s paintings explore visual oscillations and pattern structures. Currently, his work is informed by the hyper-kinetic shifts of the Op Art movement and viscous psychedelic imagery that permeated the visual landscape of his childhood in the 1960s and 70s. An additional element emerges in Rufo’s most recent work through the use of items such as commercial stencils and large flat washers to create a variety of masking effects. This added layer generates a perceptual dissonance brought on by a narrow depth of field and shapes that seemingly float atop parabolic spiral patterns.

TACNY John Edson Sweet Lecture Series

TACNY John Edson Sweet Lectures, a program founded in 1913, features discussions about topics in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics in an informal atmosphere. A minimum of six Sweet Lectures are held each year.

Technology Alliance of Central New York

Founded in 1903 as the Technology Club of Syracuse, the nonprofit Technology Alliance of Central New York’s mission is to facilitate community awareness, appreciation, and education of technology; and to collaborate with like-minded organizations across Central New York.

For more information about TACNY, visit www.tacny.org.