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Unbound Ground Artist Biographies

Sandra Budd

Sandra Budd has exhibited her work in galleries and public art venues nationally and internationally for over nine years. Her installations and paintings redefine cultural and scientific constructions of nature/human/technology interrelationships. During her graduate work at Carnegie Mellon University her work straddled many contrasting topics including toxicology, hybridization, tele-present exploration and most recently bio-genetics. Sandra is currently the Lead Exhibit Designer at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh. Her focus at the Museum is to bridge artists, scientists, and environmental organizations to work within the umbrella of a Museum to develop exhibits that address local and global environmental science issues.

Shaila Christofferson

Shaila Christofferson's work frequently explores such topics as experience and memory, language and various architectural concerns. Her installations and sculptures incorporate a diverse range of media from light and sound to more traditional physical materials. Shaila received her MFA in sculpture from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 1997. She is currently an assistant professor in foundations and sculpture at West Virginia University. Most recently she has been an artist in residence at La CitÈ Internationale des Arts in Paris, France. Since moving to the mid-Atlantic, her work has been shown in numerous regional and national exhibitions, including participation in an invitational exhibition organized in conjunction with the International Sculpture Center's conference held in Pittsburgh this past June.

Steffi Domike

Steffi Domike, Director of the Master of Art in Digital Technology Program and Assistant Professor of Art at Chatham College, has produced a number of award-winning documentaries that use electronic media to subvert established versions of history and the environment. Steffi received her BA in Economics from Reed College and her MFA from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Her 1993 production The River Ran Red won the CINE Golden Eagle and was voted "viewer¹s choice" for 1993 on WQED~Pittsburgh Public Television. Topics of her film and video work have ranged from women in industry to eco-histories of brownfield sites to the Homestead Steel Strike of 1892. Along with Michael Mateas and Paul Vanouse, she is marking the new millennium with TERMINAL TIME, an interactive history of the world for the past thousand years. Steffi is also an active member of the subRosa collective for feminist artworks and is working with A+R+C+C, a new group of Pittsburgh eco-artists. Her work has been broadcast in such diverse regions as Australia and Israel, New York City and Stockholm and she has been the recipient of numerous grants and fellowships.

Stephanie Flom

Stephanie Flom works to connect the community with art as well as to nature. Stephanie has founded the Persephone Project, which promotes gardening as a contemporary art form and gardeners as artists. A major focus of this work is the creation of a large outdoor installation venue, The ArtGardens, where artists will make works with growing materials (gardens). Stephanie is currently a Research Fellow at the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry in the College of Fine Arts at Carnegie Mellon University. Stephanie is a passionate gardener, as well as a community activist and arts advocate. Stephanie has worked for years to bring arts resources, most notably the Kelly-Strayhorn Theater and the Dance Alloy studios, to fruition in the under-served neighborhoods of East Liberty and Garfield in Pittsburgh. Recently Stephanie has begun to make work (drawings and paper cutouts) that connects her to the spirit of the natural world through symbols. Stephanie 's inaugural exhibition of this work was the creation of a 13' x 11' paper cutout mural that was made on-site in the GC Murphy Building for Aliquippa Embraces Art.

Reiko Goto

Reiko Goto was born and raised in Tokyo Japan. She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Tokyo Womens College of Arts and a Master of Fine Arts degree from San Francisco Art Institute. After graduation she worked at the School in the Exploratorium in San Francisco developing curriculum using art and science in an inquiry based learning program. Reiko has had a number of solo exhibitions and often works collaboratively. Her subjects of inquiry are living things and natural environments pursued within a new-genre public art practice. Her work has been presented at Capp Street Project in San Francisco and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. Currently she is a research fellow at the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon University. Her research focuses on social learning and takes a communicative action approach to planning and public discourse within the context of restoration ecology. She has been working on two projects over the last four years-- Nine Mile Run Greenway Project, a post industrial brownfield property and 3Rivers - 2nd Nature, an exploration of the rivers in Pittsburgh.

Leleh Mehran

Laleh Mehran creates temporary environments where veiled metaphors safely relate the conditions of an external reality, which is necessarily vague, to the precise and vivid internal realities of film characters, computer agents and symbolic references. Laleh received her MFA from Carnegie Mellon University in Electronic Time-Based Media. Her work has been shown at the Carnegie Museum of Art, The Andy Warhol Museum, the Pittsburgh Biennial at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, the European Media Arts Festival in Osnabruck Germany, the Intermediale Festival in Mainz, Germany and in Ponte Futura in Cortona Itlay. Currently, Laleh is Assistant Professor of Electronic Media and Co-coordinator of the Intermedia program at West Virginia University.

Constance Merriman

Constance Merriman is a recipient of numerous fellowships and awards including a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowship in Visual Arts and the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts Artists of the Year 1990. She is a rostered artist for the Pennsylvania Council in the Arts, Arts in Education Program and had conducted residencies on environmental art throughout Pennsylvania. Constance has been an instructor at Carnegie Mellon University, Seton Hill College and The Carnegie Museum of Art and is currently the Creative Director for the Society for Contemporary Craft. Her work has been exhibited nationally, is held in a number of private collections and she is represented in New York at A.I.R. Gallery.

Susanne Meyer

Suzanne Meyer, a graduate of Pennsylvania State University, is a registered landscape architect with a special interest in large regional watersheds, and the functioning of natural systems. She co-produced an award-winning book, From Cape Cod to the Bay of Fundy: An Environmental Atlas of the Gulf of Maine (MIT Press, 1995). She was executive producer and content developer of the environmental education web site, Watershed Atlas of the Allegheny River (watershedatlas.com), recipient of an Award of Excellence 2000 from the Society Graphic Arts. Other projects include Conservation Guidelines for the Chartiers Creek River Conservation Plan and an interactive exhibit, The Water Cycle Challenge, installed at the Carnegie Science Center. Suzanne has been a Research Fellow in Carnegie Mellon University¹s STUDIO for Creative Inquiry where she conducted a study of biodiversity, riverbank materials and public access.

Ann Rosenthal

Ann Rosenthal co-chaired the Women's Caucus for Art National Conference in Seattle in 1993, which included 23 panels and workshops, 7 exhibitions, and numerous special events. In 1995, she joined the Women¹s Caucus for Art delegation to the NGO Forum of the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing where she co-chaired a panel on environmental art. Prior to the UN Conference, she co-curated a regional exhibition, Agents of Change: New Views by Northwest Women, in conjunction with the Northwest International Women's Conference, one of several nationwide planning conferences to prepare for the UN Conference. Since receiving her MFA from Carnegie Mellon in 1999, Ann has been teaching art and electronic media in the Pittsburgh area, including a multidisciplinary course in the theory and practice of environmental art at Carnegie Mellon. Ann has been working with local ecoartists to increase interaction between artists, local communities, and riverfront initiatives. Ann recently accepted a visiting artist position at the University of Maryland at Baltimore County.

Cindy Snodgrass

Cindy Snodgrass has been producing environmentally oriented art for over thirty years. Her sculptures have been installed in New York City, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, Miami, Seattle, Dayton, Knoxville, Ithaca and Duluth. She has participated with artists in the US, Austria, Senegal, Brazil and the UK on DAX (Digital Art Exchange) since 1982. She collaborated with other artists and musicians in performances in Cleveland, Milwaukee, Syracuse, Dayton, Albuquerque and Pittsburgh. Her recent work in Pittsburgh was seen at the Pittsburgh International Children¹s Festival (funded by the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation), Cultivating Community in the Hill District (funded by Pittsburgh Public Arts) and the International Sculpture Conference.

Chatham College | Chatham Masters in Digital Technology | Rachel Carson Institute