As part of the residency, each visiting artist gives a presentation to all three divisions of the school. These presentations are open, so that parents, alumni and the general public can share the Gordon students’ experience.

The Britt Nelson Fund was established in 1996 in memory of Britt Nelson, the mother of three Gordon students and wife of a Gordon graduate. Income from this fund provides for an annual visiting artist, giving Gordon students an opportunity to immerse themselves in one of Britt’s quiet passions: the creative world of self-expression. The fund also provides for two annual faculty travel grants.

On Monday, April 21st, Gordon will welcome Rhode Island printmaker Allison Bianco to campus as the twenty-seventh annual Britt Nelson Visiting Artist. She will be on campus until May 8th, working with every grade at Gordon, introducing students to screen printing and intaglio and weaving in her own passion for creating art that is firmly grounded in history and geography. 

After May 8th, she will head to Maine to fulfill another obligation, then return to Gordon in June for two artist talks for students that adults in the Gordon community are welcome to sit in on. Dates and times for those will be announced soon.

Bianco’s work uses her virtuosic printmaking skills in service to work that is inspired by the Rhode Island coastline and often draws on the tension that can exist between childhood memory and present-day reality. Her work includes site-specific mural work as well as traditional work on paper, and she will be working with students in the seventh and eighth grade art electives to produce a panorama of the campus reflecting their lived experience of Gordon's outdoors. Students in Nursery to sixth grade students will all create trace monotypes based on their own drawings.

This was the twenty-seventh residency sponsored by the Britt Nelson Fund, which was established in 1998 to support Gordon's commitment to hands-on art education.

Courage Kpormorne Hunke was originally scheduled to travel from Ghana to be this year’s Britt Nelson Visiting Artist, but despite repeated attempts, it proved impossible to get him the appropriate visa for a visit this spring. Hunke will be connecting with Middle School students in a series of virtual workshops beginning in mid-May, and we hope to get him to Gordon in the years ahead.

Bianco’s work can be explored at https://www.allisonbianco.com/