Public Art Commission for Rhode Island College

Allison Bianco’s public art commission for Horace Mann Hall at Rhode Island College was inspired by the natural environments of Rhode Island as well as the colorful light created by the glass fins on the new building. Bianco created three artworks that were hand printed using printmaking processes including intaglio, screen print and hot foil stamping. In the second part of the process, the images were photographed at high resolution and sublimated onto coated aluminum by Blazing Editions in East Greenwich, Rhode Island. Installation Photography by Rue Sakayama.

1st Floor Lobby: Long Foretold is based on images from the Special Collections archive at Rhode Island College. Symbols of the College’s history include the old Horace Mann Hall building, the historic anchor logo, and an inflatable whale that children once explored in the school’s gymnasium. Rolls of turf signify a dawning spring, books fly overhead, and new bricks sit ready to build the future. The college’s flame logo ignites on the horizon. An overarching rainbow connects the glow of Horace Mann to the Adams Library, the foundation of education, knowledge, and history.

2nd Floor Lobby: Partly Sunny highlights exploration and challenge with a view beneath the waves. Whales discover a shipwreck in the deep, while beams of sunlight illuminate unique sea-faring creatures. The translucent inks that overlay the etched line-work recall the plays of light that the glass architecture brings into the space, which shifts depending on the outside environment. 

3rd Floor Lobby: Streaming Along explores the sky. An airstream trailer flies off into the clouds, dropping knowledge in the form of books as it travels along. The sky offers an uplifting message: to hold wonder, humor, and imagination during the pursuit of education.

All works Commissioned by the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts and Rhode Island College through the Allocation for Art for Public Facilities Act.

RI PBS Art Inc., Allison Bianco: Imagining the Storm

Local artist & printmaker Allison Bianco's unique layering of memory, history, and humor.

Aired 11/01/2024

Thank you to Producers Tracy MacDonald and Mary Steele for bringing my process to life!

A Bit of Weather at Cade Tompkins Projects

Announcing a solo exhibition of new prints by Allison Bianco at Cade Tompkins Projects. Works include large-scale intaglio/screen prints of watery worlds in a contemporary maritime tradition that depict a rising sea of mythic proportions. Bianco researched at Providence Public Library, Special Collections viewing whaling logs, hurricane scrapbooks, and Japanese Kawaraban papers leading to the eerily humorous images. Bianco is also showing bold, graphic screen print, and gouache works that were translated into porcelain tile for her first public art commission in New York City.

The show is open by appointment through December 21, 2024. Please contact me to stop over.

Installation photographs by Erik Gould.

Stand to Sea at Providence Public Library

Stand to Sea is an exhibition of prints by Allison Bianco on view at Providence Public Library through June 30, 2024.

At the top of the stairs on the third floor, the monumental six-foot copper plate etching imagines watery worlds through the lens of maritime artwork traditions. Bianco was awarded a RISCA Make Art Grant to work with Ben Watkins to create two site-specific frames that wrap around the corners of the Library’s architecture. The rising sea of mythic proportions in the print comes in the form of seven waves that travel over hundreds of years, past whales and whaling ships, from the edges of faraway oceans to the Atlantic, where they reach land at the Point Street Bridge in Providence, RI on September 21, 1938. Bianco researched at Special Collections at PPL, blending a myriad of scrapbook references, aerial photographs, whaling log illustrations and sentiments of historic Japanese Kawaraban papers to produce a view of her home state of Rhode Island, with a bright and foreboding atmosphere.

Photographs by Erik Gould

The Making of Stand to Sea

The process of creating the artwork Stand to Sea 2023, intaglio with screen print, 36 x 72 inches overall, edition of 7

Stand to Sea, solo presentation at IFPDA Fine Art Print Fair, Javits Center, NYC

In October 2023, Cade Tompkins Projects presented a solo exhibition of my work entitled Stand to Sea at the 30th Anuual IFPDA Fine Art Print Fair. The fair was held at the Javits Center, NYC. Special thanks to Sarah Cascone who included our booth in her artnet news article.

Excerpt: The 30th edition of the International Fine Print Dealers Association (IFPDA) Print Fair, which since 1991 has been a staple of New York’s fall art calendar, wrapped over the weekend. On offer from 77 international exhibitors were 500 years’ worth of fine art prints, from Old Master etchings to works made with the most cutting-edge contemporary printmaking techniques, at an unusually wide range of prices….

The members of Black Women of Print weren’t the only artists on hand for the opening, which also drew big names like Maurizio Cattelan and Mel Bochner, as well as younger printmakers like Allison Bianco, showing her dreamy shipwreck prints with Rhode Island’s Cade Tompkins Projects. That’s a marked departure from other fairs, where artists often seem to steer clear of what can sometimes feel like a market feeding frenzy.

“Artists love prints. They collect each other’s prints, and they trade prints,” Gibbs said. “Mel Bochner said this was the only fair that he likes!”

Artist Feature at Turk's Head Building in Providence, Rhode Island

Thank you to Go Local Providence for featuring my work from Michael Rose’s artist spotlight series on their big screen downtown at the Turk’s Head Building. My work was shown along with 9 other artists beginning in June 2023.

Curious Tide at P.S. 958, Brooklyn

P.S. 958, Brooklyn, Collection of the NYC Department of Education, Public Art for Public Schools

Curious Tide is a public artwork by Allison Bianco at PS 958 Brooklyn. Inspired by the ocean and beaches on New York City’s coastlines, the work features a tile mural of waves, creatures, plants, animals, food, and objects influenced by local iconography. A dramatic interaction between water and sky foreshadows a physical shift of the oceanscape beneath, with unexpected objects and color designed to provide moments of humor and wonder. The weathering and entanglement expressed in the mural is linked to remembrances of shared and changing places.

Two circular mahogany shapes hang atop the tile mural, lending warmth and harmony to the architectural design of the lobby. One is a vibrant orange and the other is accented with deep purples and reds, reminiscent of setting suns on the horizon. Here, the bright colors serve as focal points and deepen the other-worldly sentiment within the seascape.

Special thanks to Ben Watkins, Images in Tile, BK Tile, Jed Cohen, Dakota DeVos and Tania Duvergne.

Curious Tide was commissioned by the NYC Department of Education, NYC School Construction Authority Public Art for Public Schools program, in collaboration with NYC Department of Cultural Affairs Percent for Art program.

Artist Residency at California State University, Stanislaus

Thank you to Marty Azevedo at California State University, Stanislaus for inviting me to participate in their printmaking artist-in-residence program. With the assistance of Marty, Alexander Quinones and students I completed a new edition of prints entitled Winds from the West, a conflation of East Matunuck State Beach in Rhode Island and Western shores.

Master Drawings New York 2022: Presently Drawn with Cade Tompkins Projects at the Pierre Hotel, New York, NY

Cade Tompkins Projects presented an exhibition of contemporary works on paper at Master Drawings New York 2022. Cade’s booth was at The Pierre Hotel, New York, NY. Thank you Seph Rodney who included a review of Gaspee Down the Line in his article SUBTLE AND FINESSED DEPICTIONS AT THE MASTER DRAWINGS FAIR for Hyperallergic on January 24, 2022.

from the article: One of the first galleries I visited was Cade Tompkins Projects which was ensconced in the depths of the Pierre Hotel, which I only found by having the maître d’ guide me there. It was worth the initial disorientation to find Allison Bianco’s work “Gaspee Down the Line” (2020) which depicts a fantastical beach scene with waves pitched up to look like watery pinnacles and extravagant, prodigal visual elements that I wouldn’t think would belong in such a vista. Bianco’s placed a line of chartreuse like an errant bolt of lightning, a neon pink hill in the distance and few bananas tossed in the air as a kind of inside joke that has something to do with the artist and her siblings playing a prank on their grandmother.

Leave Your Troubles at Block Island State Airport

Thank you to the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts for selecting my work for exhibition at the quaint Block Island State Airport — a perfect spot for my work during the summertime (June - September 2021). Featuring the screen print Manitou, the 50+ year old Block Island Ferry; Leave Your Troubles Behind - a view of the bluffs from the ocean; and Streaming - an Airstream trailer that took to the sky; among others.

Wheaton College Acquires The End of West Exchange

I am proud to announce the acquisition of The End of West Exchange by Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts. The print will be in the permanent collection of the Wheaton College Art Museum.

Interview with Laura Berman for Reflections on Color and Printmaking

I am honored to be included in Laura Berman’s interview series with print artists, Reflections on Color and Printmaking. Laura’s thought-provoking questions give us insight into the process of artists and how they incorporate and embrace color in their work.

 “I make a point of looking for strange combinations of color and objects, because finding something unexpected in an artwork is my favorite thing.”

Allison Bianco is an artist living and working in Rhode Island (USA). Her approach to color is lively and curious, and her process of printmaking is controlled while also welcoming of unanticipated anomalies. Allison uses intaglio, screen print and hot foil stamping to create her delicate line work and vibrantly-colored prints. She also incorporates drawing and hand coloring in her work. 

Currently, Allison is working on a recently awarded public art commission for New York City public school 671K in Brooklyn for a new, permanent site-specific artwork. The commission is through the New York City School Construction Authority, Public Art for Public Schools program in collaboration with the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, Percent for Art program for the collection of the New York City Department of Education. 

Read the full interview here!

New Impressions at Jamestown Arts Center

On view March 26 through May 1, 2021 is New Impressions, an exhibition of prints by local Rhode Island artists at the Jamestown Arts Center in Jamestown, RI.

From Jamestown Arts Center:

New Impressions gives us a chance to see what sixteen Rhode Island printmakers have been up to, of late. 

The sea is an ever-present preoccupation of Rhode Island artists; our seascapes are often prized. A 19th century Mackerel Cove view by Jamestown’s William Trost Richards, for example, sold at auction a while back for well over a million dollars. Fast-forwarding to now, our artists ask us to see the sea in ways inconceivable to past artists. Pushing us really hard in this direction are the breathtaking seascape dreams of Allison Bianco. Her often fluorescing and solarizing trips to the beach are testament to the power of a few small well-placed printed gestures in and amongst brilliant color bombs. 

Right where Trost Richards painted the sea, Peter Marcus sends giantized utilitarian-like things meandering about historic Horsehead, interspersed with action painted gray drips, all in an exercise of well-worked contrasts. Meanwhile, Josy Wright makes evocative prints of celestial and generative themes.

We are directed to look down on the ocean too, using the navigational map Annie DeBethune put to work in her intense and mass-mediated collotypes. We get taken underwater in Mary Jameson’s cyanotype Kelp, and see the unseeable ocean current. 

Edwige Charlot, using silkscreen and wax, realizes water’s translucent aspects and then with printed fabric and thread assembles her way to further printmaking success. Nancy Friese shows us how important it is to work at making a dense and beautiful lithograph of which Seacoast View is one example.

Other artists who show us fresh aspects of the sea don’t start with manufactured paper as the base ingredient of their paper prints. Rather, Joan Hall deftly uses elaborate pulped substrates for her aquatic assemblages. 

Barbara Pagh starts with handmade paper too, and it’s the perfect base for her powerful stroboscopic intervals of Matunuck.

Back on land, Andrew Raftery resurrects 18th century bespoke wallpaper that would have pleased the most discerning whale ship captain in his crazy-good and technically brilliant Wallpapers. Complementing these lush and complicated letterpress papers are his transfer printed engravings on plates reminiscent of antique export porcelain. These captivating plates masterfully draw psychological tension out of mundane scenes and conjure historical figures as disparate as Grant Wood and H.P. Lovecraft.

Serena Perrone beautifully forces us, invoking Corot and Barthes, into a lens perspective in her old-new screen-prints. Her use of frame is off the charts. Lisa Barsumian uses printmaking to explore both flatness and fast flowing acrylic in her sublime botanicals. Kate Aitchison loads on dense color saturations to realize a rich Pawtucket Bridge, among other works. 

Then, gazing inwards, our final group of printmakers are joined together in their refusal of both coherent representation and abstraction. Kelsey Miller’s monoprints do so with beauty and grace, Laurie Sloan’s prints with playful deconstructed puzzle pieces, and Casey Weibust’s with re-narrated horrors—in particular, the impressive shock of little riding hood’s red.

These sixteen Rhode Island printmakers in New Impressions, taken together, are inspiring advocates for the importance of making new impressions. 

Michael Dym, Curator

Long Story Short work highlight videos at the University of Rhode Island

Thank you to Chris Anderson for creating the videos at the University of Rhode Island Main Gallery, October 2020.

Long Story Short, Solo Exhibition at the University of Rhode Island, Kingston, RI

Installation View, University of Rhode Island, Kingston, Rhode Island

Thank you to Ben Anderson, Gallery Director, for organizing my latest exhibition Long Story Short, at the Main Gallery, University of Rhode Island. Chris Anderson created short videos of the exhibition to share with a wider audience since we were unable to have an opening reception. Videos coming soon!

Forget About It exhibition highlight in Boston Art Review

Thank you to Matthew Lawrence for including my exhibition Forget About It at Cade Tompkins Projects in Issue 05 of the Boston Art Review. My show is included with other galleries and places to visit in Providence including World’s Fair Gallery, Sutton Street, and AS220 Community Printshop.

The Providence River Cover Up selected for Give Me Space: New Prints 2020 / Summer at IPCNY, New York, NY

I am pleased to announce my participation in Give Me Space: New Prints 2020 / Summer presented by the International Print Center New York (IPCNY), selected by Chitra Ganesh.

from IPCNY: Artist Chitra Ganesh selected Give Me Space, the latest presentation of IPCNY's long-standing New Prints Program, which supports artists from a wide range of backgrounds and reflects artistic production today and over the last year. We invite you to listen to (or read) Ganesh’s powerful statement on her selections and on the radical and unprecedented shifts of space—both physical and psychic—enacted in our current political moment of spiraling crises of public health and systemic racism.

Ganesh selected 54 works from submissions by over 1,000 artists, and identified five overlapping themes that serve as a framework for viewing. As you scroll down to navigate the site, explore these themes and their meanings: PsychoGeographies, Points of Contact, New Cosmologies, Environment and Justice, and A Story in Fragments.

Forget About It at Cade Tompkins Projects

Cade Tompkins Projects is presenting Forget About It, new works by Allison Bianco, in Providence, RI. Works include prints created over the past five years including the large etchings, Pouring on Jamestown and The Providence River Cover Up. To create my imagery, I employ two distinct methods. In the first, I research historic images and documentation of coastal communities and couples my interpretation of the places with anachronistic objects or other-worldly shapes and color, thereby conflating the past with the present. The second body of work begins with present day images imbued with a reverence and reconciliation with past, for example, Gaspee Down the Line (pictured above). These works underscore the inherent mysteries of the future.

Center for Contemporary Printmaking Micro-Residency in Norwalk, CT

Shelley Langdale, Curator and Head of Modern Prints and Drawings at the National Gallery of Art awarded a micro-residency at the Center for Contemporary Printmaking for my selected print at the Boston Printmakers 2019 North American Print Biennial. I had the fortune of working with Master Printer Chris Shore to create a small edition of copper plate etchings with chine collé. The print will be finished with screen printed layers and will debut at my solo exhibition at Cade Tompkins Projects in Providence, RI in May.