ROSCINA, EILEEN

Statement
Disconnection from the environment fuels the myth that we are the most important entity on the planet. My creative practice challenges this fallacy by examining what nature can teach us about being human. I use pressed flowers, willow, mycelium, mirror and alternative film methods to raise the potential of realizing a radically different world where people, spirit and nature are irrevocably intertwined. Through metaphor, my artwork challenges the viewer to slow down, and shift perception into the present while gently drawing awareness to perception itself.  My art practice often relies on spending hundreds of hours growing from seed or gathering organic materials in the wilderness that I use to make biotic material sculptures and experimental films. By manipulating celluloid film, abstraction in my analogue work paves the way for interpretation as a poetic act between the viewer and the screen. Sculpting hand-collected organic materials in concert with specialized industrial optics, I propose a radical re-evaluation of the natural world, our connection to it, and to one another. 

My artwork draws from observation of ecological forms and processes; animal architecture, the unexpected and often dramatic beauty in the smallest of cellular processes and the magic of decay. Generation and decomposition are part of my process, an inquiry into material ephemerality—and our own mortality. I aim to encourage an internal dialogue, and inspire a greater awareness of the benefits from connecting with nature.

Biography
Eileen Roscina is an artist, experimental filmmaker and naturalist from Denver, Colorado. She holds an MFA in Art Practices from the University of Colorado, Boulder and a BFA from Emerson College in Boston, MA, and also trained at the School of Botanical Art and Illustration in Denver. Through biomimicry and the study of biophilia, her work examines human’s spiritual and social (dis)connection with nature, and seeks to raise questions about realizing a radically different metaphoric mapping of time, space and our place in the world. She has exhibited film internationally, and visual art at Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, Denver Art Museum, Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art (Boulder), Museo de Las Americas (Denver), Vicki Myhren Gallery at University of Denver (Denver), Center for Visual Art (Denver), Arvada Center (Arvada), Dairy Art Center (Boulder), University of Colorado (Boulder), Salina Art Center (Kansas) and was the 2019 Resident Artist for the National Western Stock Show, a 2018-2020 resident at RedLine Contemporary Art Center, Denver. She is represented by Walker Fine Art Gallery in Denver, CO.