ARTIST OF THE WEEK | Georgia Schwender of Geneva

by Mindy Kyle

FOUNDER OF THE ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE PROGRAM AT FERMILAB

Geneva resident Georgia Schwender is an artist and a curator, seeped in science. In the 1990’s she was employed by Brookhaven National Laboratory, NY as a photographic specialist supporting science. This is where her interest in science bloomed.

In 1995, Georgia was part of a three-person exhibit in the Fermilab Art Gallery in Batavia exhibiting “Stem” - large format black and white photographs from the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh, Scotland. In 2001, she became Curator of the Fermilab Art Gallery.

In 2014, she founded the Artist-in-Residence Program at Fermilab, which enables an artist to have access to places and experiences not usually open to the public in order to create a signature body of work that is displayed in the gallery. The development of this program inspired her to personally apply for other programs and was awarded Artist-in-Residence at Homestead National Monument in Nebraska. This gave Georgia time to work on her photography series, “Prairie Quadrat Study”, cyanotype photos of native tall-grass prairie plants from restored areas of the prairie at Fermilab. “This once vast tall-grass prairie is an endangered eco-system,” explains Georgia. “I hope that my work will bring light to the beauty and importance of the tall grass prairie in the Midwest.”

To view more of Georgia’s artwork, visit her website at www.georgiaschwender.com or on Instagram at @Tallgrassclay and @georgia5387.

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