Rueff Galleries opens season with collages by Val Britton, posters by students from Purdue

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — The Patti and Rusty Rueff Galleries will feature intricate collages by Val Britton and posters by students from Purdue University beginning Aug. 22.

The Patti and Rusty Rueff Galleries are housed in Yue-Kong Pao Hall, 552 W. Wood St.

"Woman," an international invitational exhibition of posters, will run in the East Gallery through Sept. 9. This poster exhibition is the result of a collaboration between Purdue's Rueff School of Visual and Performing Arts and the Communications Design Program at the Instituto Superior de Diseno in Havana, Cuba. The invitational exhibition was organized by professors Flor De Lis Lopez Hernandez from Havana and Dennis Y Ichiyama from Purdue.

"This event comes after efforts by the United States government and the Vatican to renew relationships with Cuba," said Ichiyama, a professor of visual and performing arts. "It is my hope that our efforts will open up dialog with ISDi and further educational relations with faculty and students in Havana."

Students at both schools created original posters exploring the theme of "woman." An exhibition of the posters opened in Havana on April 27 as part of the weeklong Second Annual Festival del Cartel, dedicated to women. The exhibition was also part of the First Design Biennial of Havana, which opened in May.

Purdue's exhibition honors the 18 American students who participated in the project, and various organizations, including Xerox, and individuals who supported the project in Cuba and here at Purdue.

"Navigator," a solo exhibition by Val Britton, will run in the West Gallery through Sept. 16. Britton also will give a talk about her work at 10:30 a.m. and again at 12:30 p.m. on Sept. 8 in Stewart Center, Room 206. These talks are free and open to the public.

Britton creates immersive, collaged works on paper and site-specific installations that explore physical and psychological spaces. Her fragmented, exploded landscapes draw on the language of maps to explore memory, history and the possibilities of abstraction.

Britton was born in Livingston, New Jersey, and currently lives and works in San Francisco. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from Rhode Island School of Design and her Master of Fine Arts from California College of the Arts.

 "I am interested in how my work can explore the tension between chaos and imposed order, the concrete and the imaginary, the known and the unknown," Britton said.

A recipient of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant and the Fleishhacker Foundation Eureka Fellowship, she has participated in residencies and fellowships including the Affiliate Program at Headlands Center for the Arts, Recology, Millay Colony for the Arts, Kala Art Institute, the Facebook Artist in Residence Program, the Golden Foundation and Ucross. She has exhibited in museums, galleries, art fairs, alternative spaces, and nonprofit institutions including the San Jose Museum of Art, Gallery Wendi Norris, the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art and the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery. Group shows include the San Jose Museum of Art, the Katonah Museum of Art, the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History and the de Saisset Museum.

Writer: Amy Patterson Neubert, 765-494-9723, apatterson@purdue.edu

Source: Liz Erlewine, eerlewin@purdue.edu