about
colleen garibaldi
Lives and works in Washington DC
I use personal experience to comment on social order or disorder, often working obliquely. Never interested in depicting conventional objective reality, my work mines that which is often hidden, unintended or misunderstood. I search for ways to connect with, release or sometimes just simply acknowledge deep seated emotions in response to life’s experiences. This has been a very fertile time. Like many, I bumble about my day relying on habits and associations to order my world. I find, however, much richer meaning when I leave that aside, discovering nuggets of ambiguity that lurk within. Acknowledging ambiguity leads to the dissolution of dogmatic thinking, opening the door to overcoming fragmentation. Artmaking has long been my vehicle for inquiry, revelation and catharsis.
form + gesture
I have spent the better part of my career making figural work drawn from my felt experience, subverting and reframing the use of female form to start a conversation about collective conditioning and inequality using painting, drawing, time-based and 3-dimensional mediums. While still deeply connected to these issues, I have also been drawn to continue my investigation of felt response to lived experience while exploring a new modality. This body of work, created during the chaos of 2020 and centered on painting, marks a stylistic departure, emphatically reflecting the chaos and divisiveness of the current time. This pull to give in to process more fully, percolating for years, has allowed me to respond to the pandemic and social justice revolution more fully and in often surprising ways. I'm curious about what comes next, if peace will remain elusive.
awards
2017 Grantee, DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities FY17 Artist Fellowship Program Individual Artist Award
2017 Fellow, VCCA/Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, March/April Residency
2016 Sarah Stanley Gordon Edwards and Archibald Cason Edwards Fellowship, VCCA Scholarship
2014 Vermont Studio Center Merit Grant and Residency
2000 Workshop Scholarship, Cloud Farm Palladium Workshop
1998 Faculty Scholarship for Materials, Studio for Advanced Studies, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
1997 Named as a KOAN Emerging Talent 1997 (Ken Oda’s Art Newsletter)
exhibitions
2019 ArtVoices 10th Anniversary Issue
2018 Superfine! DC, Union Market Dock 5, invited exhibitor
2018 Installation at The Shay, ThinkLocalFirst DC Market
2018 UMW Galleries, Fredericksburg VA, Mid Atlantic New Painting
2017 Fitton Center for Creative Arts, Hamilton OH, Kaleidoscope
2017 Towle Hill Studio, Corinth VT, Colleen Garibaldi Painting
2017 Tieton Arts & Humanities’ MightyTieton Warehouse, Tieton WA, 10x10x10xTieton
2017 200 I Street Gallery, Washington DC, Synergy
2017 Smithsonian S. Dillion Ripley Center, Washington DC, SCC Artists at Work
2017 Barry Gallery, Arlington VA, Figuring: 4 Regional Artists Exhibition Marymount University
2016 Martha Gault Gallery, Slippery Rock, PA, Our Bodies Our Selves
2016 ArtVoices Art Books, 101 Contemporary Artists, inaugural issue
2016 DC Arts Center, Washington DC, 1460 Wall Mountables
2016 BWAC, Brooklyn NY, Wide Open 7
2016 Visual Arts Exchange, Raleigh NC, the beginning of everything
2015 SCOPE Miami Beach, Miami FL, Untitled Projects
2015 Washington Art Works, Rockville MD, A Foot in the Door
2015 Monmouth Museum, Lincroft NJ, Juried Portrait Exhibition
2015 ArtPrize Seven, Grand Rapids MI
2015 Lincoln Center, Fort Collins CO, Annual Contemporary Art Survey
2015 200 I Street Gallery, Washington DC
2015 Washington Art Association, Washington Depot CT, Art of Painting
2014 Studio Visit Magazine, Winter
2014 Vermont Studio Center Open Studio Solo Studio Exhibition, Johnson Vermont
2014 Album Art and Graphics Commission, Cloud Farm Productions
2014 (e)merge Art Fair, Washington Project for the Arts, Washington DC
2014 200 I Street Gallery, Washington DC
2001 57N Fine Art, Washington DC, Still Life with Self: A Survey of Contemporary Trends in Self Portraiture, curated by Tim Martin and Kevin Cowl
2001 The Athenaeum, Alexandria VA, A Survey of Washington Artists, Curator: F. Lennox Campello
2000 eklektikos Gallery, Washington DC, Mortimer – A Partial Exhibition of the Series
2000 Rockville Arts Place, Rockville MD, Under the Influence: Manon Cleary and Her Students, A Retrospective, curated by Manon Cleary
1997 Museum of Contemporary Art, Washington DC, KOAN Emerging Talent
1997 eklektikos Gallery, Washington DC, Monoprints and Drawings (with Craig Kittner)