Artists
United States of America
Sheila Coppola
MUTUALISMS
07.02.24 28.02.24
Sheila Coppola was part of the 8th edition of our online program Together Apart, under the theme and title of MUTUALISMS. Sheila is a lover of music, poetry, dance, drama, visual arts, and people in general in all their tumultuous variations. A painter, a printmaker, and a collaborative printer focused on relief and intaglio printing. A United States north-westerner born and raised, with a life devoted to printing for other artists while pursuing a personal art practice in the wings. She’s the founder of Sidereal Fine Art Press, housed in a refurbished pole barn in Tukwila, WA, USA. Sheila is a believer in the power of art to shape and move us, in positive concert, towards a healthy and more just planet.
ARTIST STATEMENT & TESTIMONY
My artwork combines printing, painting and collage and is inspired by the poetry of George Oppen. Oppen’s statement “the objectification of significant particulars” motivates my practice. Specifically, in the collection and distillation of gathered information from my personal observations of the natural and not so natural world around me. These distillations are layered over and under images from my memories, dreams and other related visual associations. I like to think of my artworks as “Poetic Cartoons.”
During MUTUALISMS, we were gathered together from the edges of our planet: Argentina, Australia, Mexico & the USA. We communed for four 3 hr. sessions facilitated with gentle expert guidance by the ´ace program Directors and Coordinators. We shared and learned new information about our similarities and differences across time and space. We were stretched and challenged and propelled into new ways of thinking and seeing the world, ourselves and our relationships with other species and organisms. We experienced trust and faced some of our fears. Our practices were layered, overlapping and interwoven. Beginning with the concept of Mutualism, (defined and demonstrated so eloquently by Daniela Ruiz Moreno, Andres Knob, Rodrigo Arteaga and Alicia Candiani), we as participants were able to realize together a process which encompassed conceptual and emotional growth, a realization of possibilities and a sharing and merging of experiences, information and memories. A collective encounter that affected me deeply and one that was greater than the sum of its parts.
BIO
Sheila Coppola
1955 | Eugene, Oregon
Lives and works in Tukwila, USA
EDUCATION
1982 | BFA Painting, minor Printmaking. University of Washington, USA
1982 | Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, Maine, USA
EXHIBITIONS
2024 | 14th Annual Juried Exhibition. Gallery 110, Seattle, USA
2023 | 80 days in August: 10 years Duwamish River Artist Residency. AMcE Creative Arts, Seattle, USA
2019 | Sheila Coppola: New Prints. Highline Heritage Museum, Burien, USA
2013 | Road Trip. Hickory Museum of Art, Hickory, North Carolina, USA
AWARDS & OTHERS
2023 | Culture & City of Tukwila grants for joint project: Large Woodblock Workshops and Demonstrations
2016 | Ongoing: Tukwila Arts Commissioner
2016 | Ongoing: Kopila Farm (sharing our land with the Bhutanese & Myanmar farmers under the auspices of the IRC (International Rescue Committee)
2000 | Ongoing: Seattle Print Arts, USA
1982 | Merit Scholarship, Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, Maine, USA
Related Activities
Together Apart
# 8: Mutualisms | Results
Artists in Dialogue
07.02.24 28.02.24
In this new edition of Together Apart, we met again, this time under the title Mutualisms. During 4 weeks of intense exchange, 12 artists from different countries and cities collaborated and contributed to create this space of mutuality in which to freely explore their ideas.
In the words of Daniela Ruiz Moreno, program curator: “The 8th edition of Together Apart was, once more, a very gratifying surprise to us—
the coordinators and creators of the programme. It was very interesting to see how the individual interests of each artist were articulated with each other through collaboration across different disciplines, the generation of collective archives, and the invention of methodologies for coexistence. We were able to observe a gradual development, akin to an accumulation and metabolization of all the knowledge and information shared by the various team members and the invited artist, Rodrigo de Arteaga, as well as the invaluable knowledge shared by each participant. We explored alternative approaches to artistic practice, a different way of conceiving scientific knowledge, and acted in response to the urgent need for these two areas to collaborate more frequently. As one of the participants mentioned, the final session felt as watching -in a fast forward speed- a garden grow. Bringing back one of the philosophers who accompanied us during this program, I would like to quote again the words of Michael Marder regarding the writings of Hildegard von Bingen, a Benedictine abbess who in the 12th century was contemplating more holistic and spiritual approaches to ecology and the plant world. Hildegard proposes to look at the mystery of plantness, of greening greenness, of growth. I believe that the arts, in relation to many other forms of knowledge, serve as a vehicle to achieve an awareness of the interdependence inherent in all forms of life on this planet and a re-enchantment with the mystery that life forms entail. Each participant in this program allowed us to do just that, from observing the mystery of trees that make many fundamental cycles of our lives possible, to the landscapes that surround us and shape us, the different constructions and perceptions of time, to the intricate and not entirely straightforward relationship of our coexistence and co-creation with technology and nature.”
