KOLAM - Key Persons
Bruce Wall is a painter whose artwork focuses on combining two and three-dimensional forms using a blend of painting, drawing, and mixed media materials. His work has been widely exhibited in New York City and internationally as well as being reviewed in Artforum, ARTNews and The New York Times. His work is in numerous public and private collections including City College of the City University of New York, The Aldrich Museum, Ridgefield, CT, and the Ackland Art Museum, University of North Carolina, Best Products, Zales Corporation, and Lehigh Valley Hospital. He holds a M.F.A. in Painting from Rhode Island School of Design and a B.F.A. in Painting and Printmaking from the University of Texas, Austin. He is also a former Fulbright-Hayes Grant recipient for travel and research on folk art designs in India.
Wall has received two Faculty Innovation Grants for research at NCC and was recently awarded the first Cecil and Eleanor Lipkin Chair in the Fine and Performing Arts. Prior to coming to Northampton, he was Director of the SoHo Center for Visual Artists in New York City and Fine Art Advisor for Liquitex Art Products at Binney & Smith Inc. in Easton. He has been at NCC since 1993 teaching beginning and advanced courses in Painting and Drawing, Two-Dimensional Design and Color, Three-Dimensional Design, Art History, and the Fine Art Major capstone course, Individual Studio - Professional Practices. Bruce's work can be found at bruce-wall.com
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor, Communication Design, Kutztown University
- Freelance Web Designer
Joshua Miller is a freelance web designer, college professor and interactive artist living in eastern Pennslvania. Josh has taught courses in animation, web/graphic design, video game design, and programming at a variety of schools including: Lehigh University, Northampton Community College, Drexel University, Lafayette College, Montgomery County Community College, and Lehigh Valley College. Josh currently holds a tenure-track position at Kutztown University, where he teaches web design, graphic design, and interactivity. He also teaches part time at Lehigh University, and runs a successful freelance design business in his downtime. Josh's true interests lie in the intersection between design and programming, specifically with the creation of digital interactive work. Josh's work can be found at josh-miller.com.
Kolam is an ancient folk art form that is still practiced daily on the floors of Hindu Temples and on the doorsteps of homes by the women of South India. Using rice powder, crushed stones and spices, as pigments, these dry powders are held in the hand and dropped to the ground by sifting between the thumb and forefinger.
The designs symbolize "welcome" and invite all things auspicious to enter within. The primary motif consists of a grid of dots surrounded by a meandering line. These "wave" designs, as they are called, with their twists and turns, reference the endless flow and ultimate unity of life. Their impermanence is a reminder of the transitory nature of the material world.
I was introduced to Kolam while still a graduate student at Rhode Island School of Design by a professor who had recently traveled to India. He showed me a small booklet on Kolam that he had purchased at a train station and I was immediately taken by the designs. They seemed to have a relationship to my own artwork as well as to contemporary art and art history. A few years later I was fortunate to be able to travel to India myself via a Fulbright grant to photograph Kolam designs in the towns and villages of the South.
Thanks to the Lipkin Endowed Chair, this exhibition brings together selections of those documentary photographs originally taken in 1980 of Kolam and related Indian art traditions, with research and new artworks completed in 2011. These new works were inspired by Kolam and also explore the possibilities of new media. The techniques and methods used include drawing, painting, sculpture, installation, video, 3-D animation, virtual drawing, and augmented reality. NCC student artworks based on Kolam from Fine Art studios, Communication Design classes, and workshops are also on view.