EXPERIENCE
1991-2007 - Participated in 125 solo and group art exhibits in the United States and Europe . Published numerous short stories, essays, criticism and exhibit reviews.
2007 - Adjunct Professor of Art; Naugatuck Valley College , Waterbury , CT
2004-present - Artist -Teacher; Pomperaug High School , Southbury , CT
2002-2004 - Screenwriter; “The Art of Leaving,” directed by Brian Kamerzel
2002-2005 - Visual Arts Co-Director; The Multicultural Arts and Technology program at CCSU
2001 - Art Advisor/ State Of CT Department of Education – International Art Exchange Program, The Republic of Trinidad and Tobago .
1988-1990 - Manager; Painting Department; National Theater of Opera and Ballet, Bucharest , Romania .
1986-1990 - Costume and set painter; National Theater of Opera and Ballet, Bucharest , Romania .
EDUCATION
• 2005 - Central Connecticut State University , New Britain , CT ; Masters in Art Education
• 1997 - Central Connecticut State University , BS in Art Education
• 1994 - Naugatuck Valley College , Waterbury , Connecticut
• 1983 –Nicolae Tonitza Lycée, Bucharest , Romania , Fine Arts Major
• Independent studies with Romanian artists Constantin Ciocârlie, Adrian Benea,
and Mihai Horea.
HONORS AND AWARDS
• 2005 - Selected by the editors of Art Business International as one of the 2005 Emerging Artists/ Trendsetters
• The film, “The Art of Leaving” – official selection of the 2003 Santa Fe International Film Festival; the 4 th Annual Durango Film Festival (2004); the 1 st Artivist Film Festival, The Egyptian Theater, Hollywood (2004); the 26 th Annual Big Muddy Film Festival, Chicago (2004); the New York Film Festival (2004); the Williamsburg Film Festival, New York City (2004); the 23 International Film Festival of Art Films, Montreal (2005)
• 2000 - Included in “Who’s Who in America ” – The Millennium Edition
• 1997 - Included in the 27th Edition of “Who’s Who in the East”
• 1994 - National Prize for Literature - New York University
• 1992 - Honorable Mention - National Arts Program
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITS
• 2007 – Art Gotham Gallery , New York City, NY
– TAP (Teachers as Artists Projects); Chashama; New York City
– WAA Gallery , Washington Depot, CT
• 2006 – Lascano Gallery, Great Barrington, MA
• 2005 – White Space Gallery, New Haven, CT
• 2005 – Illuminations; Mixed Media works, Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center , Boston , MA
• 2004 - Four Visions; The New Hartford Art League Photography Group Show, New Hartford, CT
• 2003 - Picturing What Matters: An Offering of Photographs; George Eastman House, Rochester , New York
• 2001 - Circle of Learning; Samuel S.T. Chen Gallery, Central Connecticut State University , New Britain , CT
• 2000 - Six Painters – Six Visions; Gallery on the Green, Canton , CT
• 1995 - The Governor's Mansion, Hartford , CT
• 1991 - Fairfield University , Fairfield , CT.
SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITS
• 2007 – Marie-Louise Trichet Gallery, Litchfield , CT
• 2005 – White Space Gallery, New Haven , CT
• 2004 – ACT II Gallery, New Hartford , CT
• 2000 - The Bushnell, Hartford , CT
• 2001 - Horace Bushnell Suite/ The Bushnell
• 1997 - Emporium Gallery, Mystic, CT
• 1995 - Pat Steier Gallery, Litchfield , CT
• 1995 - Miss Porter's School/ Gilbert Gallery , Farmington , CT
• 1994 - York Square Gallery, New Haven , CT
• 1994 - Small Space Gallery, New Haven , CT
SELECTED THEATRE PRODUCTIONS/ SETS
• 1989 - Romeo and Juliet - ballet; music by Serghei Prokofiev
• 1989 - Lucia di Lammermoor - opera by Donizetti
• 1988 - Norma - opera by Vincenzo Bellini
• 1988 - A Midsummer's Night Dream Comedy - ballet.
• 1988 - Don Pasquale - opera by Vincenzo Bellini
• 1988 - Taming the Shrew - ballet; music by English Renaissance
Composers.
SELECTED COLLECTIONS
• St. Francis Medical Center, Hartford , Connecticut .
• Maura Marsu Collection, Bucharest , Romania .
• Higher Education Center, Waterbury , Connecticut .
• Nell Vismantas , California .
• Semina de Laurentis , Connecticut .
• Don & Linda Batt Collection, New York .
• Gerda Bolingbroke , Connecticut .
• Karen VanSeters, San Francisco , California
• Ann Reid, Philadelphia , Pennsylvania .
Artists Statement
I am interested in exploring universal themes through private questions. I am preoccupied with the issues of identity, love, death, loss, reality versus fiction, dreams and memories. Recently I have departed from strictly using personal memorabilia (family photos, letters between my parents, etc), and started to incorporate personal artifacts of people I have never met. I have been exploring the interplay between personal and universal by “adopting” other peoples’ lives, remembering their memories, dreaming their dreams. Within these new works, I am interested in constructing a certain mystery, create hidden introspections and multiple meanings that invite you, the viewer, to question, and hopefully, enjoy my work. In a world hyper-saturated with images, I still believe that everything is possible, anywhere, anytime. I have always believed in parallel universes in which the past and the present coexist in different dimensions. From time to time, they meet through gates that no one could precisely define or locate. I hope that my art could often function as one of those gates.
I have been living in the United States for 17 years now, primarily a visual culture. Shifting from my artistic beliefs rooted in a European classical/ humanistic tradition to the fast-pace of a commercial culture was also bewildering. How do we choose? How do we find meaning in this visual pandemonium? Some images are subversive, and feel like rust, slowly decaying our perception of reality. Then, there are the one-nightstands of commercial photography, the streets, the museums, the television, the ads, the movies, the fashion statements, the unforgettable and the forgivable. Other images, the apologizing images of a Golgotha of worn shoes at Auschwitz, the mountains of eye glasses, the suicide bombers, the forgotten tools of introspection of the past century that has failed to see and learn from its own wounds, are competing for our attention as well. We live in an enormous, constantly changing puzzle. I am trying to connect my sensibility with the viewer’s. In this light, my new mixed-media compositions are riddles born out of the juxtaposition of the real and the imagined, the private and the universal, the desire and the cancelled desire. I believe in beauty as a way of putting order in chaos. What I do is a reflection of my interest in philosophy, music, photography, literature, film, nature, and history. I find amazing sources of inspiration in everything surrounding me: my students’ work; my walks around the streets of New York City or Paris; a Mahler symphony; Proust, Saramango and Borges; a Godard film; a graffiti-covered wall; an old photograph found at a flea market. Meaning is never a one-way road, and therefore is always a result of collaboration between what I am trying to communicate, and what you are willing to see. And maybe you will find that humanism could do more than survive in that precious space between Paris Hilton and Abu Ghraib.
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