SVA: Bio Art: First Impressions

Today was the first day of my artist residency.  It started out with (free!) breakfast and coffee- off to a great start already.  There are about 60ish residents at this time (there are a couple of different summer sessions).  Out of those 60, there are 16 in my Bio-Art Program.  We are an amazing group! I am so excited to get to know these people and learn from them.  We come from all over the U.S. and the world, and varying ages, and only two males out of 16 of us (poor guys!).  We had brief 5 minute presentations about us and our work today to get to know the people in our program; and there was some really good work shown.  I am so excited to work with these people and get to know them better.  I took a lot of notes today just during the presentations just because of some of the interesting things the artists' said about their work.  One of my greatest weakness is presenting myself and work- and sometimes its all about having the right words.  Bio-Art is a new language for me, so I took notes.  
The SVA facilities are amazing.  The layout makes sense, the building is clean, our studios are white cubes, and they have state of the art stuff for art making! Laser cutters, 3D printers, full wood and metal shops, tons of equipment available for checkout, macs everywhere, and just an overall very impressive building to work in.  The Bio lab is going to be awesome to work in, I can not wait to learn cool stuff.  Cloning plants, making paintings with bacteria, photographing objects at a microscopic level, the list goes on.  This month is going to fly by.  

Jars of specimens.

Cow eyeball.

Oh yeah, I get to wear a white lab coat- legit. 




Check back for more SVA Bio-Art updates.  I'm sure I'll have a lot to show and talk about.  Today was just the first day.