Brown Bag Lunchtime Artist Talk: Dimitra Skandali
Thurs. April 20, 12-1pm
Glendening Annex
Free pizza or bring your own lunch
Dimitra Skanali is an Artist House Artist-in-Residence: April 10 – May 10, 2017
The experience of growing up on Paros, an island in the Aegean Sea in Greece, and her journey since then to build a community across the oceans, is central to the work of Dimitra Skandali. “I carry my island with me everywhere”, she states, and it shapes the way she sees the world. The artist creates installations inspired by their exhibition spaces weaving together found elements and sounds from those locales and other sites to create ethereal forms; reminders of the sea, with its openness and possibilities, as well as its fragile and unstable limitations. The process of familiarizing herself with these new places through the search for materials helps her to weave together points of connection in an ever expanding web, even if only temporarily. Skandali was educated in Greece and the Netherlands before moving to California, and earning her MFA in New Genres from San Francisco Art Institute in 2013. Her awards and honors include the 2014 First Place from Marin MOCA, Novato, CA; the 2013 First Place-Anne Bremer Memorial Prize, and the 2013 Outstanding Graduate Student Award in New Genres from San Francisco Art Institute; the 2012 Murphy & Cadogan Contemporary Art Award and Fellowship from the San Francisco Foundation. She has been a selected artist for the 2012 and 2014 (1st and 2nd) International Biennale of Santorini Island, GR, for the 2013 NextNewCa show at the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, for the 2014 12th Biennial Sculpture Exhibition, in Bellevue, WA, and she has been one of the four 2×2 solos at ProArts Gallery in 2016, in Oakland, CA. She has also been awarded artist-in-residences in 2013 Post Studio | Studio 110 Residency in Sausalito, CA, Root Division in San Francisco (2013-14) CA, Lucid Art Foundation in Inverness (2014) CA, the Studios of Key West (2014), FL, and the Jail/Cell Residency, in San Francisco (2015) CA. Skandali has shown both nationally and internationally, in venues like Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, CA, the Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, CA, San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, San Jose, CA, the Museum of Art and History in Santa Cruz, CA, the P.A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology, Berkeley, CA, the Aegean Center for the Fine Arts, Paros Island, GR and in several galleries around the US, the Netherlands and Greece. She currently lives and works in San Francisco, CA and on Paros Island, GR.