Valerie A. Brodar
Associate Professor of Media Arts
Director of Visual Arts
Degrees:
M.F.A. The School of the Art Institute of Chicago: Time Arts
B.F.A. Carnegie Mellon University: Printmaking & Fiber
Additional Studies:
Middlesex Polytechnic, London: printmaking and drawing
Syracuse University, London Centre: art history
Ohio University: installation and printmaking
My multimedia installations and videos investigate the perceptual nexus between domesticity, trauma, memory, dreams, and language. Exploring how personal narratives construct a sense of belonging to the physical, emotional, intellectual, and cultural body politic. Weaving together located and dislocated places, embodied and disembodied times, the presence and absence of individuals, objects, images, smells, and sounds, through an ephemeral reflection on the past. Using multi-sensory interactive technology to shift the individual’s sense of a located self within the ever expanding virtual world. The viewer completes the work in a constantly changing interaction, reaction, experience; a dialogue of memories lost and found.
Selected Work
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Selected National and International Exhibitions:
Instituto Cultural Peruano Norteamericano, Miraflores, Peru
Zico House, Beirut, Lebanon
Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh, PA
SOHO20 Chelsea, New York, NY
Center on Contemporary Art, Seattle, WA
Artemisia Gallery, Chicago, IL
Betty Rymer Gallery, Chicago, IL
Gallery 2, Chicago, IL
The Erie Museum, Erie, PA
The International Gallery of Contemporary Art, Anchorage, AK
Red Reel Video/Film Festival, Denver, CO
Carnegie Mellon University Gallery, Pittsburgh, PA
Arizona State University West Gallery, Phoenix, AZ
The Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, Colorado Springs, CO
Dead Horse Ranch State Park, Cottonwood, AZ
Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, Pittsburgh, PA
Gallery of Contemporary Art, Colorado Springs, CO
+ Gallery, Denver, CO
Selected Grants & Awards:
Creative Works Creative Research - University of Colorado
Great Lakes Regional Fellowship Program – Center for New Television, Chicago
Purchase Award, Erie Museum, PA
Catalogues:
Installations, Mattress Factory 1990-1999, Claudia Gianinni (Ed.), 2001, University of Pittsburgh
Press, pages 34 - 35.
Sculpture Chicago, Culture in Action, Mary Jane Jacob, Michael Brensen and Eva M. Olsen (Ed.),
1995, Seattle: Bay Press, Inc., pages 88 – 97.
Community Service:
Member:
The College Advisory Committee of the Denver Art Museum
The Justice & Peace Scholarship Committee
Artist lectures:
University of Denver
The Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center
American University of Beirut, Lebanon
Zico House, Beirut, Lebanon
Co/Organizer:
"Curatorial Voices in Contemporary Art", lecture series
"International Dialogues: Art in the Global Sphere Peru", lecture series
“The Integrated Object: Materiality and Performance”, lecture series
“Through the Lens: Representation in Contemporary Photography”, lecture series
“Technology, Race, Gender: Art in the 21st Century”, lecture series, UCCS
“4th Front Range Student Art Exhibit”, Block 7, Lakewood, CO
TIE, three-day experimental film festival, Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center
“Student Videos at the Palettes Café”, Denver Art Museum
“Mary Lucier”, workshop at UCCS, lecture at Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center
“Third Front Range Student Art Exhibit”, UCCS
“Engineering the Image” lecture by Jim Campbell, UCCS
Juror:
third year architecture students, Lebanese American University, Byblos, Lebanon
first year architecture students, Lebanese American University, Beirut, Lebanon
Exhibition Selection Committee, Gallery She She, Chicago, IL
Riverrun student literary and art magazine
Teaching Philosophy:
I see the artist as an educator having three primary roles as an interpreter, a nurturer and as a catalyst to the student's overall development of a
personal voice. My courses are approached from a conceptual basis with an emphasis on developing a proficiency in technique and use of technology as an
essential part of this process. I do my best to create a learning environment that is flexible and non-threatening based on patience, humor, diversity,
encouragement, and acceptance.
Courses I teach:
VA 101 Beginning Studio 2D
VA 210 Digital Imaging
VA 310 Advanced Digital Imagining
VA 410 Advanced Projects in Electronic Imaging
VA 306 Special Topics: Audio Collage
VA 306 Special Topics: Experimental and Narrative Video
VA 398 Seminar in Studio Problems
VA 403 Internship In Visual Arts
VA 498 Professional Seminar
VA 940 Independent Study
VAPA 110 Art in Time & Space