PVDFest 2020 Public Artist – Karin Giusti
Artist Bio:
Karin F Giusti is an artist who specializes in public art with a deep reflective sensibility. She holds masters in Sculpture from Yale University and a Bachelors from University of Massachusetts in Amherst. A Professor Emirati at Brooklyn College CUNY, Giusti’s awards include the John Simon Guggenheim: Fellowship in Sculpture Installation, the New York Foundation for the Arts: Fellowship in Architectural/Environmental Structures, the New England Foundation for the Arts NEA: New Forms , and the State of Connecticut Commission of the Arts: Artist Fellowship in Sculpture. She has lectured widely at institutions including the Smithsonian Institution, on “Temporary Public Art”, and at Columba University on “Public Art/Public Culture.” Her work has been featured in Art New England, The Boston Globe, Berkshire Fine Arts, Art in America, ArtForum, and The New York Times and her projects have been hosted by Creative Time in NYC, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council NYC, the NYC Parks Dept., Socrates Sculpture Park, The Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in NYC, the Smack Mellon in Brooklyn NY, MIT in Boston MA, The Aldrich Museum in Ridgefield CT, and Real Art Ways, in Hartford CT. The artist lives and works in Rhode Island and in Italy.
“Dreamweave”
Location: Civic Center Garage, 165 Washington Street
“As a child, I remember excursions with my mother and sisters, to the Providence and Warwick textile mill outlets. We would forage for fabric remnants to create something wonderful. I will craft this ‘placemaking’ public art work on the lovely grid pattern facade of Civic Center Garage. The beams make a natural longitudinal thread or ‘warp,’ to my transverse ‘weft,’ which will be made of different fabric patterns. I will not only reference the dynamic current cultural movements in Providence area today, but also acknowledge the history of this region as a textile capital of the country.
Weaving has been a powerful symbol in my life as it represents the ‘weaving together of the world,’ a narrative in traditional Native American stories about the Spider Woman. This project will use a printed, high-tensile-strength, backlit medium, encased in clear UV stabilized laminate material. These printed ribbons will be 23 inches wide by 34 feet long, resembling a bolt of woven or printed fabric. During the daytime, the vibrant colors and sculptural weaving will be stunning to look at. Lighting in back of the weaving will produce a lantern like affect during the night.
The overarching theme of this project is to weave a third space into existence as if a wise ‘Spider Woman’ could harness cultural creative energies of PVDFest. E.W Soja’s conceptualization of Thirdspace powers this dream weaving. Soja’s theory of Thirdspace is where “everything comes together… subjectivity and objectivity, the abstract and the concrete, the real and the imagined.”
