BIO

Rhonda Wall was born in Boston, MA. She received her BFA from Rhode Island School of Design and her MFA from Vermont College. Wall has been working in a variety of media including painting, drawing, collage, prints, installation, and performance since 1978. In the 1980s, Wall was part of the vibrant East Village art scene in NYC, exhibiting at Sensory Evolution Gallery and B-Side Gallery.

Wall's work has been reviewed and written about in Artnet News, The New York Times, New York Magazine, Whitehot Magazine, Blouin Art Info, ARTSINBUSHWICK, ARTFCITY, ARTNews, Kolaj Magazine and Arts Magazine. Her artwork is in numerous public and private collections including The City College of New York, McGraw Hill, Needham Harper & Steers, Lehigh Valley Health Network, the Allentown Art Museum, the University of North Carolina, Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, NC, Housatonic Museum of Art, Bridgeport, CT, and previously in the collections of The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Keith Haring Foundation. Wall has had more recent solo exhibitions at Martin Art Gallery, Muhlenberg College, Allentown, PA, Handwerker Gallery, Ithaca College, Ithaca NY, Spring/Break Art Show curated by Renée Riccardo/ARENA, NYC, Accola Griefen Gallery, NYC, the Allentown Art Museum, Princeton University, Accola Contemporary Gallery, Lafayette College, Lehigh University, Cedar Crest College and Mississippi State University.

Wall was a Professor of Art at Kutztown University for 21 years.

ARTIST STATEMENT

In my painting/collages, I create hybrids of factual and fictional subject matter in an effort to transport the viewer to another place – an invented yet believable world where past, present and future events merge into one and everything happens at the same time.

I research and collect images, headlines, and visual phenomenon based on a specific idea and theme for a series. The images come from my photographs, books, magazines, newspapers, the Internet, covers from videos, and anything else I come across that fits the concept in some way. Women characters have always played a major role throughout all of my work. Whether they are human, aliens, robots, androids, clones or a mixture, they rule the worlds and landscapes that I create. I start with a nonobjective painted geometric background. From historical figures to pop icons, scientific breakthroughs to religious symbols, advertisements from the 60s, space exploration to political campaigns, natural disasters to greeting cards, I pick things that are particular to the situation at that moment. There is a logic to the selection process, although it may not seem apparent at first glance. A piece of collage is like a tube of paint, just another material to use. It will come down to what works formally.

Specific events, stories, inventions, and the dynamic of technology versus nature inspire and affect me -- for example: the disappearance of a Malaysian airplane, the Ebola epidemic, solar panels, and IED detection. In the studio, I’m not afraid of anything. I like that things are unpredictable, like a game, a challenge.

At one point, I’ll ask myself “how is this game going to end?” It just has to play itself out; I am an observer and a participant. In the end, my work has always been and continues to be about survival.