I have been active in art making for over twenty-five years. I received an MFA in Fiber from Northern Illinois University in 1981, and a BFA from the same school in Textile Printing and Design in 1975. I lived the early portion of my life in New Jersey, and have lived in the Mid-West for over a decade, in a small town in Upstate New York for several years, and am a resident of Pennsylvania now and have been for the past two years. As a student and to the present day, I have continued in the pursuit of how to integrate other processes, like painting, photography, collage, and weaving with the genre of portraiture. Over the years, this has lead to many trials and errors in discovering how to tell the truth about a subject and their life while also being honest with the materials and techniques that are the vehicle for expression. Although my work can be described as being in a constant state of evolution, I also feel that this is a very exciting time for me in art making when, at mid-career, all of these processes and ideas are merging in a way thats meaningful. In 1990-91, I received a Visual Artist Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, Washington, DC, for a group of painted and woven portraits. I used different recognizable symbols in the backgrounds of each portrait to tell about the subjects' lives. While living in New York in 1989, I received a New York State Council on the Arts Decentralization Grant to create a body of portraits from those whose lives were connected to the same river town in which we lived. Each subject was named for a painted tulip that was a part of each portrait, as a metaphor for the landscape of the mountainous foothills. During my career, I have been in numerous group exhibitions in museums, university and commercial galleries, and alternative spaces. At the present time, my work is in "State of the Art: Pennsylvania 2003," at The State Museum in Harrisburg, and "Crafts National" at the Lancaster Museum of Art. I have also exhibited at the Everson Museum in Syracuse, NY ("The 1996 Everson Biennial"), the Munson Williams Proctor Museum of Art in Utica, NY (56th & 57th Exhibition of Central New York Artists"), The University Art Museum at SUNY Albany ("Memory and Mourning"), the Albany Institute of Art & History ("Body Parts") and Northern Illinois University Art Museum in Chicago ("NIU Collected). I have also exhibited my work at the University of Pennsylvania, Arthur Ross Gallery ("Confronting Cancer Through Art"), SUNY Potsdam, Gibson Gallery ("North Country Triennial Award Winners"), Skidmore College, Schick Art Gallery ("Clay, Fiber, Metal Invitational"), Auburn University in Alabama, Biggen Gallery ("Superimpositions"), Bucknell University, Samek Gallery ("Faculty Showcase"), and the University of Tennessee Knoxville/School of the Art Institute of Chicago ("Artist Source" traveling exhibit). I have had One or Two-Person Exhibitions at Sybil Larney Gallery, Chicago; Contemporary Art Workshop, Chicago; MoMing Gallery, Chicago; SUNY College at Brockport, NY; Illinois Wesleyn University, Bloomington; ARC Gallery, Rawspace, Chicago; University of Notre Dame, Indiana; Columbia College Dance Center, Chicago; and Northern Illinois University. I have also been in group exhibitions at 76 Varick, New York; Holland Tunnel Project, Brooklyn; Tyler Art Gallery, SUNY Oswego; Lake Placid Center for the Arts, Lake Placid, NY; Adams Art Gallery, Dunkirk, NY; Peninsula Fine Arts Center, Newport News, VA. In 2006, my work will be on exhibit at the Art Association of Harrisburg, School and Galleries, in Pennsylvania
Gail Skudera retains all rights to all artworks on this website.