Public Art Symposium: Finding Our Place on Campus and in Community

General Registration: https://forms.office.com/r/tt0xgQbB5X 

Art-making workshop Registration: https://forms.office.com/r/5K5tPhWgZP 

Official Schedule of Events

9:00AM-9:30AM Introduction to Public Art: Participating with Purpose presented by Oaklianna Caraballo

9:30AM-9:45AM Coffee Break

9:45AM-10:45AM Diasporic Pigments in Conversation with Dr. Porchia Moore:

The Praxis of Intentionality

10:45AM-11:00AM Break

11:00AM-12:30PM Keynote Presentation by Nastassja Swift

12:30PM-1:30PM Lunch Break

1:30PM-2:15PM Public Art Tour led by Solana Rostick

2:15PM-2:30PM Closing Remarks

2:30PM-4:30PM RETRACE: Felted Memories 2-D Workshop led by Nastassja Swift

The Public Art Symposium: Finding Our Place on Campus and in Community centers the public in public art. New and returning students, as well as faculty, staff and the surrounding community can learn about public art, its place on campus, and explore meaningful interactions with art encountered in the built environment. This Symposium will educate, inspire, and foster connection to each other through our shared campus experience with public art. Public art aids in recovery by creating a sense of belonging and wonder. Art heals when connection is found. The programming consists of presentations, a keynote, discussions, art making, and touring public art on campus. The Public Art Symposium is a time to come together to explore the value, to celebrate, to appreciate, and to thoughtfully question the role of art in the public sphere. 

Featured Keynote Speaker: Nastassja Swift

Nastassja Swift is a Virginia Commonwealth University alum working primarily in fiber, sculpture and performance. In 2023, Nastassja was commissioned by the SCAD Museum of Art to perform “Turning Seeds” a collaborative and site-specific masked performance centered around the history of rice. Similarly, in 2021, she produced a masked youth parade in Cleveland, OH, and in 2019, her short film, and documented collaborative performance, “Remembering Her Homecoming,” premiered at the Afrikana Independent Film Festival, and screened at the Virginia Film Festival in Charlottesville. 
 
Nastassja is a recipient of the Center for Craft: Research Fund Artist Fellowship, a VMFA Fellowship, a Dr. Doris Derby Award, an Art Matters Fellowship Award, the inaugural Black Box Press Foundation - Art as Activism Grant, and a Virginia Commission of the Arts Fellowship. In 2022, she was selected as a Distinguished Fellow at the Penland School of Craft. Her work was acquired into the Grace Linton Battle Memorial Fund for the Arts Collection and Quirk Hotel in Charlottesville. Nastassja has been included in the Berlin publication - SomeMagazine, Bmore Art Magazine, RVA Magazine, RHome Magazine and the a Seattle publication, the Stranger, She has participated in several national and international residencies and exhibitions, including her solo exhibit in Doha, Qatar in 2016, NADA Miami, The Urban Institute of Contemporary Art in Michigan, Carl Freedman Gallery in the UK, and fellowships at the Vermont Studio Center, SPACES in Ohio, and MASS MoCA in Massachusetts. 
 
Nastassja is currently living and working in Virginia. 

Oaklianna Caraballo Bio, ASB Program Website, and Session Description

Oaklianna Caraballo is the Public Art Specialist at the University of Florida working with the Art in State Buildings Program (ASB). She began her public art career in 2005. Since then, she has overseen 30 public art projects and maintains a collection of 176 works of art spanning the state of Florida. Through the administration of the UF ASB Program, she seeks to participate in the ever-evolving field of contemporary public art discourse with a focus on advancing the field for both artists and institutions.

Oaklianna is a recipient of the City of Gainesville’s Art in Public Places Trust Public Art Award (2019) and a University of Florida Superior Accomplishment Award (2014).

Oaklianna currently serves on the Gainesville Art in Public Places Trust. She has been a member of the Florida Association of Public Art Professionals since 2006 and has been a FAPAP Board member since 2009. She served on the Executive Board as FAPAP President 2022-2024.

Oaklianna has spoken at the Florida Association of Public Art Professionals annual conference on the topics of Digital Management Software for Public Art Administrators (2017), Calls to Artists and Selection Panels (2024), and served as a Public Art 101 panelist (2022, 2023). She also served as a panelist and presented on the topic of starting a public art program at the College of Central Florida Lecanto Campus (2022).

Oaklianna received her bachelor's degree from Florida State University and her master's degree in Museology from the University of Florida.

Art in State Buildings website:https://publicartarchive.org/collections/University-of-Florida-s-Art-in-State-Buildings-Program

Introduction to Public Art: Participating with Purpose

Oaklianna Caraballo, UF Public Art Specialist, presents various ways we can participate in and with public art. As artists, community members, or art enthusiasts, we can all connect with public art through its creation and encounters. But how is this achieved? And why should this matter? In this presentation, we’ll explore the tips and tricks needed to navigate public art production and engage in dialog about how we can meaningfully participate, as viewers, in public art.

Yvonne Ferguson Bio and Artist Website

Yvonne Ferguson was born in Ft. Walton Beach, Florida and moved to Gainesville, Florida as a toddler. Always yearning for the creative arts, her childhood was spent gravitating to anything artistic -- books, graphics, paints, chalks, crayons, and comics --all culminating in a desire to create. After graduating from Gainesville High School, she studied Art History at Virginia Wesleyan College in Norfolk, Virginia. She has shown her work as a featured artist at the Center of Women Studies at the University of Florida, the University of Florida Institute of Black Culture Black Artists Showcase, the Civic Media Center and Wild Iris Book Store and Matheson Museum as part of Gainesville Downtown Art Walk. She has also been showcased on ARTlanta and ArtICentric online art magazine as the featured guest artist of the month. She has been featured as chosen artist backdrop by Blavity.com online news source. Yvonne has participated and won awards in the Millhopper Arts Festival and Downtown Arts Festival. Yvonne was the featured live painting artist at the Gasparilla Music Festival while painting The Roots live during their performance. She has had several gallery showings at Illsol Studio in Tampa which is now transformed into Merge Culture Studio, Matheson History Museum, and the Cotton Club Museum and Cultural Center. Yvonne has completed two murals for the City of Gainesville, on Nina Simone and Donald King, Jr. Yvonne looks forward to her next solo show, Unapologetic Vol. 1 postponed to February 2021 at the Cotton Club Museum and Cultural Center. Birthed by Yvonne Ferguson, Diasporic Pigments is her celebration of the beauty, history, culture, and people of the African diaspora through art. https://www.diasporicpigments.com/bio

Dr. Porchia Moore Bio

Porchia Moore is the Associate Director of the Center for Arts, Migration, and Entrepreneurship and the Rotating Program Head of Critical Museum Studies at the University of Florida. A Co-Director of the Incluseum, and international cultural heritage collaboratory, her writing and research is used as training and learning materials at museums across the country. She is the co-creator of The Visitors of Color project; a national counternarrative project recognized by the American Alliance of Museums as a resource that seeks to highlight and share the lived experiences, insights, and reflections on modern museums from marginalized citizens. Her writing interrogates the cultural heritage of the Black Atlantic and the Deep South and the intersections of technology, cultural heritage, and community.

Dr. Porchia Moore received her Ph.D. from the University of South Carolina in the School of Library and Information Science and the McKissick Museum Management program. The recipient of the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) Laura Bush 21st Century Cultural Heritage Informatics Leadership Librarian fellowship, she is a museum visionary and activist-scholar who researches suppressed narratives museums and other cultural heritage spaces. Her research examines the intersections of race, community, technology and social media, and inclusion in museums.

She is a curator whose co-curated exhibition, "From Shadow to Substance" was named one of the top ten university museum exhibitions by Forbes magazine.

She has been an advisor to many national museum projects including MASS (Museums as Site for Social) Action with the Minneapolis Institute of Art and Museums and Race. She served as consulting curator at the Columbia Museum of Art and curated the rotating African American art gallery, “Spoken”.

Dr. Moore has served on numerous boards such as Friends of African American Art and Culture at the Columbia Museum of Art (where she served as the first ever Inclusion Catalyst), Museum Education Roundtable, and Women and Gender Studies at the University of South Carolina, in addition to serving on a multitude of advisory and planning committees including the South Carolina Federation of Museums, Museum Computer Network, and more. She speaks internationally on issues of race, inclusion, and social justice in cultural heritage institutions. She was recently awarded a UF Global Fellows fellowship and has multiple books and articles forthcoming in 2024-2028 and beyond.

Yvonne Ferguson and Dr. Porchia Moore Session Description

Diasporic Pigments in Conversation with Dr. Porchia Moore: The Praxis of Intentionality: Artist Yvonne Ferguson of Diasporic Pigments will be begin the session with an overview of her work with a special focus on her recent awards which include a Center for the Arts, Migration, and Entrepreneurship SPARC 352 grant to paint a mural at the historic Cotton Club Museum as well as a prestigious award from the North Seattle College Mural Project to design a community mural which focuses on the legacy of James Baldwin. Ferguson will then join Dr. Moore in speaking about her practice as an artist who centers the African diaspora, Black community, and a praxis of intentionality. The conversation will explore opportunities and challenges for artists as they navigate calls for public art, how museums and other cultural organizations can support artists, and the importance of values-driven principles which promote, protect, and support emerging artists, especially those of the diaspora.

Solana Rostick Bio

Solana Rostick (she/her) is a Florida-based emerging museum professional. She is a second-year master’s student at the University of Florida pursuing Museum Studies. Her museum interests are in collections management within the art museum space. She is concentrating in modern and contemporary art history, specifically within the African Diaspora with an emphasis in sculpture, textiles, and photography.

As a critical emerging museum professional, she desires to see the art museum not only promote the creativity of underrepresented groups but also within their collection holdings. Through a critical engagement of Black and Brown people's lived realities, she hopes to dismantle the idea of the white cube through the idea of curatorial activism.

Solana has interned and volunteered at the Spartanburg Art Museum, Richardson Family Art Museum, Tampa Museum of Art, James Museum of Western and Wildlife Art, Cotton Club Museum and Cultural Center, Florida Museum of Natural History, and the Harn Museum of Art in visitor engagement, education, exhibitions, and collections.

Solana graduated in 2023 with a Bachelor of Arts in Art History from Wofford College in Spartanburg, South Carolina.

Nastassja Swift Artmaking Workshop Description

RETRACE: Felted Memories 2-D Workshop In this workshop, we will explore the practice of remembering and retracing as recovery. Working from old photos, we’ll recreate past moments and experiences through Needle Felting with wool, as a method of holding space for ourselves and our varied experiences. Using a piece of felt fabric to size, we will apply transfer methods to allow for an exact fiber replica of the original photo. Then, with a specific set of needles, we will add details and texture to pull each past moment to the present. Once completed, we’ll leave this workshop with a two-dimensional felted recreation of a story once lived. **All materials are provided, though you will need a physical copy of your image. **

Sponsored in part by the College of the Arts Creative B Summer Program in partnership with the Office of the Provost.

Address

3259 Hull Road

Phone

352-392-9826

Website

Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art Website