Leonardo Education Forum Elects New Chairs

Leonardo Education Form is pleased to announce the election of two new chairs:

Patricia Olynyk who will serve as chair Sept 2009 -- February 2012 (along with co-chair Ellen Levy)
Joe Lewis who will serve as chair February 2011 -- February 2014 (along with co-chair Patricia Olynyk)

BIOS:

Patricia Olynyk is an artist and educator whose work frequently employs microscopy, biomedical imaging technologies and other methodologies found in the life sciences to explore the nature of life at the micro and macro levels. She is also the Director of the Graduate School of Art and the Florence and Frank Bush Professor of Art in the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts, Washington University in St. Louis. She is currently developing new curricular initiatives for graduate education that will provide significant opportunities for cross-disciplinary creative work and research, which will engage the university's Media and Machines Laboratory in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Biotechnology and Medicine, and the Center for the Study of Ethics and Human Values. Olynyk is also co-author of the College Art Association's new Standards and Guidelines for MFA Programs, which were amended last year.

Prior to her appointment at Washington University in 2007, she taught at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where she directed the Penny W. Stamps Distinguished Visitors Program and the Roman J. Witt Visiting Faculty Program. In 2005, she became the first non-scientist appointed to the University of Michigan’s Life Sciences Institute.

Olynyk received her MFA degree with Distinction from the California College of the Arts and then studied in Japan for four years as a Monbusho Scholar and Tokyu Foundation Research Scholar at Kyoto Seika University. Her work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions at: the Brooklyn Museum; the New York Hall of Science; the Museo del Corso in Rome; Galleria Grafica and the Saitama Modern Art Museum in Japan; the Universität der Künste, Berlin; the Denise Bibro Gallery in New York and the Toby Moss Gallery in Los Angeles. In 2005, she created the installation Sensing Terrains, for the rotunda of the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C. Soon thereafter,she was awarded a Francis C. Wood Institute for the History of Medicine Fellowship at the College of Physicians of Philadelphia; and recently, an Analogous Fields: Art + Science Residency from the Banff Center, where she has three times previously been in residence.

Her upcoming video projection for the Digital Video Theater in the Hall of Science at Notre Dame University is a collaboration with the Digital Film and Media Production Center at the Banff Center. The work suggests that nature exists as one reality: substance, and that complex patterns of formation and movement found in it are self-organizing and reveal a multitude of embedded codes and implied narratives.

Joe Lewis is an artist and Dean of the School of Art and Design, New York State College of Ceramics, at Alfred University. He is a graduate of Hamilton College and received an M.F.A. from the Maryland College Institute of Art, where he was a Ford Foundation fellow. NY. He is represented by Kathleen Cullen Fine Art in New York and in 2008 was awarded a New York Foundation for the Arts/NYFA Fellowship in Photography and named Deutsche Bank Fellow.

Joe’s work has appeared in solo and group exhibitions including The Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, OH; Bridge Center for Contemporary Art, El Paso, TX; and the Substation, in Singapore; Kathleen Cullen Gallery and the Durst Corporation, New York; and group exhibitions at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; and the Studio Museum in Harlem, Additionally, besides having written for Art in America, The LA Weekly and Artforum, my essays regarding the confluence of art, technology, and society have been published in anthologies and peer reviewed journals.

Moreover, Joe has held positions in the foundation field as well as in municipal government, most notably as project manager for the Jackie Robinson Foundation and administrator of the Public Art Program for the Cultural Affairs Department of Los Angeles. From 2001-2004 Joe was Dean, School of Art and Design, Fashion Institute of Technology, New York. Prior to that he served as Chair, Art Department California State University Northridge; and was on the faculty at California Institute of the Arts. He is also the co-founder of Fashion Moda and has curated and organized numerous exhibitions and community-based art partnerships.

Finally, Joe has served on numerous boards including the College Art Association/CAA; National Council of Art Administrators/NCAA; National Association of School of Art and Design/NASAD; Californian Lawyers for the Arts; Side Street Projects, Los Angeles; The Bronx Museum, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art (The Contemporary), Baltimore, MD; and the Visual Studies Workshop, Rochester, NY.

About The Leonardo Education Forum

The Leonardo Education Forum (LEF) promotes the advancement of artistic research and academic scholarship at the intersections of art, science, and technology. Serving practitioners, scholars, and students who are members of the Leonardo community, LEF provides a forum for collaboration and exchange with other scholarly communities, including the College Art Association of America (CAA), of which it is an affiliate society.

Find out more about the Leonardo Education Forum

Updated 24 September 2009