Saint Michael's College has named Brian D. Collier, installation artist/sculptor/digital media innovator as a new assistant professor of fine arts, starting this semester teaching courses in digital media and sculpture. Professor Collier’s work repeatedly addresses issues of environmental concern.
His exhibit, “Bird Shift: The Anthropogenic Ornithology of North America,” has just been completed for the University of Colorado Natural History Museum in Boulder. The work shows how humans have impacted bird populations, using a tongue-in-cheek approach to demonstrate the very serious threat of extinction to many bird species as a result of human actions.
He is working on another tongue-in-cheek, but serious big work, The Ornithology of Big Box Stores, which treats the phenomenon whereby birds fly into such places as Lowes. His creation would put plants atop the store’s huge display structures to give the birds a resting spot and for a variety of reasons. At the same time, he would put clear shield/attachments on Lowes shopping carts to protect shoppers from droppings, while allowing them to look up.
Collier will be teaching an installation art class that will focus on site specific work and objects that have movement. In the spring he will teach a digital imaging class called “subject-object” that focuses on how material informs the content.
Professor Collier earned his bachelor of fine arts degree in sculpture from the State University of Buffalo in 1993, and his master of fine arts degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2007. His art production includes objects, photos, video, installation art, public projects. He says the core is installation sculpture and digital media. He usually designs websites of his art.
“I’m very attracted to teaching at a school the size of Saint Michael’s, with the relationship to students that this size allows,” he said. “I like the scale of this better than a big university,” he said, “and the people here are fantastic—everyone is so friendly and helpful.”
Professor Collier was a teaching assistant at Illinois from 2005-2007, an instructor in interdisciplinary arts and sculpture at Kansas City Art Institute, Kansas City, Mo., from 2007-2009, and an adjunct faculty member in art and design, sculpture, at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, in 2010. He received a number of faculty development grants from the Kansas City Art Institute, and several individual artist and emerging artist grants from the Illinois Arts Council, the Center for Exploratory and Perceptual Art of Buffalo, N.Y., and other sources.
Professor Collier’s solo exhibits include “The New Birds of New Harmony” shown in 2010 at The New Harmony gallery of Contemporary Art in New Harmony, Indiana; “Reimagining the Environment at the University of Kansas,” shown in 2008 at the Kansas Union Gallery, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas; “Teach the Starlings in Kansas City,” shown in 2008 at the Paragraph Gallery, Urban Culture Project in Kansas City, Mo.; “The Highway Expedition,” shown in 2007 at Rowland Contemporary in Chicago, and “Very Big Show about Very Small Objects,” shown in 2007 at Alice C. Sabatini Gallery, Topeka, KS; and other solo exhibits, every year since 2001.
His work is included in a number of groups shows with such titles as “Animal Animus” at the Schuykill Environmental Education Center in Philadelphia; “Bird Shift” at ArtSites Gallery in Riverhead, NY, an environmental-themed show in New York, NY, at Bohemian National Hall Gallery; a show called “Feeling the Heat: Artists, Scientists, and Climate Change,” shown at the Deutsche Bank 60 Wall Gallery in New York, NY; a show called “Biodiversity is” at the KU Natural History Museum at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, KS; a show called “Weather Report: Art & Climate Change” at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, curated by Lucy Lippard; and a large number of other group exhibitions.
Professor Collier has also given numerous artist lectures, panels and performances; had his art described in catalogues and publications; and seen his art used on covers of books. His work has been reviewed n such works as Art Education; Art in America (several times); The Kansas City Star; The New York Times; Boulder Daily Camera; Artvoice, and a number of other publications. Web-based publications have written about his works, “Teaching the Starlings,” “Naked City—Map Portraits,” and others.
The Edmundite Catholic liberal arts college, www.smcvt.edu . Saint Michael's provides education with a social conscience, producing graduates with the intellectual tools to lead successful, purposeful lives that will contribute to peace and justice in our world. Founded in 1904 by the Society of St. Edmund and headed by President John J. Neuhauser, Saint Michael's College is located three miles from Burlington, Vermont, one of America's top college towns. Identified by the Princeton Review as one of the nations Best 373 Colleges, and included in the 2011 Fiske Guide to Colleges, Saint Michael's has 1,900 undergraduate students and 500 graduate students. Saint Michael's students and professors have received Rhodes, Woodrow Wilson, Pickering, Guggenheim, Fulbright, and other grants. The college is one of the nation's top-100, Best Liberal Arts Colleges as listed in the 2011 U.S. News & World Report rankings.