ARTIST BIOGRAPHY
Fine Artist Monica Iancu possesses over twelve years of visual and cultural arts training. She was born in Timisoara, Romania and raised in New York. Monica earned her BFA from Massachusetts College of Art & Design, where she received departmental honors and distinction. In 2003, she was awarded a 2D Fine Arts Department Award. She has exhibited in several group shows in Massachusetts and New York.
The artist has also been involved in arts education. As part of a cross-cultural art and literacy program, she worked with Navajo children in Shiprock, New Mexico. She has been greatly influenced by her experience of the southwest landscape and her study of Native American and eastern mythology and traditions. She has also worked as a teaching artist in Roslindale, Massachusetts, shortly after graduating.
After moving back to NYC she received a certificate in Arts Administration. She went on to work as a freelance marketing assistant and studio assistant.
In 2008, she participated in the Teaching Artist Training & Residency Program with the Community Word Project in order to pursue her original interest in teaching. She currently volunteers in the Children’s Program for the Shambhala Meditation Center of New York, of which she is a member. She has also led Saturday children's arts classes at Salvatore LaRussa Dance Theatre in Queens this past year.
As a visual artist, her specialty is in painting, mixed media, collage and printmaking, working with handmade drawn and printed materials, She creates works that reference natural textures, processes, and environmental themes. Her subjects vary from architecture, to deserts, to the arctic.
She hopes to “ignite a sensitivity and appreciation for the subtlety of organic life and instill a deeper awareness of process and history." These themes are powerful for what they convey about transformation and change as well as for how they might relate to art-making and our human experience.
The narrative of the arctic is haunting; it evokes both a physical and psychological terrain that is both raw and desolate as it is wondrous and sublime. Yet despite all this, it's ultimate fate is fragile and gloomy. The reality of global warming conditions in the poles, pollution in our oceans, and wildlife extinction is timely and worthy of immediate attention.
In 2010, she was invited to attend a three-month fine arts residency at SLDT. Her exhibit, Studies in Impermanence: Rivers, Islands & Stones, was featured in the Queens Art Express Open Studios Festival.
Monica currently freelances and has assisted in everything from marketing, production, administration, bookkeeping, to studio and art education.
She hopes to pursue more exhibition, residency, and education opportunities. These plans include developing lessons and programs geared to cultivating an appreciation for the earth and all life, its biodiversity and multiculturalism, and peaceful expression through arts exploration.
She has been accepted to Pratt Institute as a graduate student in the MS Art & Design Education Program where she will receive her teaching certification training.
Monica Iancu currently lives and works in Queens, NY. She is a member of The Shambhala Meditation Center of NY, The Drawing Center, Children’s International, and the NRDC.
Her favorite writers are Annie Dillard, Rebecca Solnit, & Pema Chödrön.
Favorite past-times include: Reading science, non-fiction, poetry, theology, & dharma; collecting rocks and found objects; taking walks; visiting museums; watching films; documenting urban street-art, life and culture; learning to breathe, think less, and look more.