Our current resident artist, Sheri Simons, will be leading an artist’s talk on Tuesday October 25th at 6pm at the Siena Art Institute, in person and also simultaneously live-streaming on our Facebook page and YouTube channel. 

Using materials such as wood, steel, electronics, men’s dress shirts, rubber, organ pipes, Sheri Simons (b. Detroit, Michigan, 1954) creates sculptures that engage the viewer with sight, sound, and movement. Her works of art utilize sculpture as an instrument, something designed to cause or aid in an action or reaction. Born and educated in Michigan, with a BFA from the University of Michigan and an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art, Simons has resided in California since the mid-1980s. She has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the California Arts Council, and the Michigan Council for the Arts. Residencies have taken her around the globe, including the Japan-US Friendship Commission and Youkobo Art Space residencies in Tokyo; a residency at ZK/U: Zentrum für Kunst und Urbanistik in Berlin; and a residency at Artpark in New York. In 2019, Simons worked in the Glass Shop as a G.A.P.P. (Guest Artist Pavilion Project) artist in residence at the Toledo Museum of Art.

Her sculptures have been included in exhibitions at such institutions as the Fukushima Biennale, Japan; the Cranbrook Museum, Michigan; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco; the Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco, the Kansas City Art Institute; and the Detroit Institute of Arts.

For more information, visit her website: www.sherisimons.com

Join us Tuesday Oct 11 for an artist’s talk with Lebanese artist and illustrator Hanane Kai in person at 6pm at the Siena Art Institute and live-streaming on Siena Art Institute’s Facebook page & YouTube channel.

Hanane Kai is an award-winning illustrator who brings a design approach to her art. Based in her home studio in the mountains of Lebanon, she has worked with various clients, ranging from small publishers to Pearson, Facebook and BBC. She is especially attuned to the role of emotion in visually communicating a message – something that is often overlooked in the process. Hanane’s areas of expertise include creative formats for publishing, visualising sensitive topics for children, and humanitarian storytelling.
Some of her many awards include the Bologna Ragazzi Award 2016 New Horizons category , several Etisalat Arabic Children’s Book Awards for Best Production and Best Illustrations, the multiple Mahmoud Kahil Awards, and shortlisted for the World Illustration Awards


This artist’s talk on Oct 11 is part of the initiative of Regione Toscana ‘s Giovanisì – Regione Toscana #toscanaincontemporanea

Join us Tuesday Oct 4 at 6pm for a talk with our current artist-in-residence Dr. Leah Modigliani, part of our series of talks StARTers: Assaggi d’Arte (Tastes of Art)

The event will be in person with refreshments and also live-streaming online through the Siena Art Institute’s YouTube channel and Facebook page. (6pm Siena, 5pm London, noon NYC)

Currently at the Siena Art Institute for a month-long artistic residency, Dr. Leah Modigliani is an Associate Professor of Visual Studies at Tyler School of Art and Architecture (Philadelphia, USA). She is an artist and scholar with transdisciplinary engagements informed by fine arts, art history, critical geography, urban studies, and politics. Modigliani’s projects are engendered by and respond to the history of the avant-garde and its relationship to political critique, feminist art and writing, social dissent, the histories of photography, performance and re-enactment as political strategy, and the pernicious effects of neoliberal capitalism. The center of her art and writing is a focus on the myriad ways individuals’ freedom of expression is destroyed, curtailed, or displaced through socio-economic factors beyond their control.

Modigliani’s visual work has been exhibited at many galleries and museums including Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts Museum (Philadelphia), Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco), Colby College Museum of Art (Waterville, ME), the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia (Halifax), the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art (Toronto). Her critical writing can be found in academic journals and contemporary art magazines such as Mapping Meaning the Journal, Anarchist Studies, Prefix Photo, Art Criticism and C Magazine. Her book, Engendering an avant-garde: the unsettled landscapes of Vancouver photo-conceptualism, was published by Manchester University Press’s Rethinking Art’s Histories series in 2018. Her second book, Counter-Revanchist Art in the Global City will be published by Routledge in 2023.

More info on Dr. Leah Modigliani:

Instagram: @lmodigliani & @time_moves_in_mysterious_ways
www.leahmodigliani.net

Every day brings new experiences! We have been exploring Siena’s historic center with our current participants from Siena School for Liberal Arts & Siena Art Institute! This fall we have a very international group, with participants from China, Greece, Lebanon, Turkey, and the US! We’re excited to have you with us this semester!