Label Type
Cultural/Historical ContextLabel
"Phyllis McGibbon is a Professor of Studio Art and co-director of the Architecture program at Wellesley College. A member of the faculty since 1994, she was granted tenure and awarded the Pinanski Prize for excellence in teaching in 1997. Professor McGibbon teaches all levels of drawing and printmaking and some intermedia courses, including a studio seminar, “Art and Travel” as well as “Spatial Investigations,” supported in part by a grant from the Mellon Foundation. Before joining the Wellesley Art Department, Professor McGibbon taught at Pomona College, the Claremont Graduate University, and Wesleyan University. She travels frequently as a guest artist/ studio critic and has served as non resident faculty for the graduate print program at Rhode Island School of Design, the low residency MFA programs of Vermont College and Maine College of Art, the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the University of Georgia study abroad program in Cortona Italy.
Professor McGibbon earned her B.F.A. with distinction from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1983. Following a period of travel and artist residencies at print studios in Belgium, Scotland, England and Canada, she returned to UW-Madison and completed an MFA degree in printmaking and installation art in 1988. Ms McGibbon has since enjoyed fellowships from the Kala Institute, the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, the Millay Colony, the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, and the Vermont Studio Center. She has also conducted intensive studio workshops for the Anderson Ranch Arts Center, in Snowmass, CO and Peregrine Press, in Portland ME. In the summer of 2007 McGibbon was part of a delegation of print artists traveling and speaking in China.
Professor McGibbon’s prints, drawings, and artist books are included in over 30 public collections. Described by the Los Angeles Times as “a tinderbox of ideas and allusions”, McGibbon’s art merges drawings, hand pulled prints, installed print / drawing constructions and installations made in response to specific architectural settings.
She has developed installations on site at the University of Northern Iowa Art Gallery, the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, the Davis Museum and Cultural Center at Wellesley; Sushi Inc in San Diego; The Orange County Center for Contemporary Art, Clarke College in Dubuque IA, and the Davison Art Center at Wesleyan University. Awards for her work include grants from the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, The Western States Arts Federation NEA, Art Matters, Inc. and the Howard Foundation at Brown University. - Wellesley College Faculty Page"