Allison Bianco is a visual artist and printmaker whose work illustrates how the space between water and land can change slowly over time, or drastically with the onset of huge storms. Her recent series explores The Great Hurricane of 1938 and its impacts in Providence, Rhode Island. Poignantly, this historic storm devastated parts of MacDowell, notably Star Studio.
Public art commissions include Curious Tide, a porcelain tile mural with mahogany for PS 958 in Brooklyn; and Long Foretold at Rhode Island College in Providence. Her work was featured by Rhode Island PBS in an episode entitled Allison Bianco: Imagining the Storm. Stand to Sea, a solo exhibition of Bianco’s work was shown at the 30th Annual IFPDA Fine Art Print Fair in New York (2023). Her work is in the collections of Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, Philadelphia Museum of Art, The New York Public Library, RISD Museum, Yale University Art Gallery, University of San Diego, and the Hawai'i State Foundation on Culture and the Arts, among others. Bianco lives and works in Rhode Island and her work is represented by Cade Tompkins Projects.
At MacDowell, Bianco collected historic images and photographs at The James Baldwin Library, the Monadnock Center for History and Culture, and contemporary photos from the MacDowell campus that chronicled The Great New England Hurricane of 1938 and its devastation to the forests and town. She made a series of soft ground etchings in Putnam Studio, and will complete them with screen print at her home studio space. The goal of this ongoing series is to track the storm through the New England corridor to create a traveling solo exhibition upon the 90th anniversary of the hurricane.
Portrait by Brandon Smith
