Re-materialize curator Heather Moqtaderi speaks with Shari Mendelson about her sculptures in the exhibition, as well as making art in times of social distancing. The conversation will be accompanied by photographs of Mendelson’s artworks. This program will be held in the Zoom webinar format, and viewers will have the opportunity to submit questions and comments. About Shari Mendelson: Shari Mendelson mines art history for intriguing objects that become the source of inspiration for her work. She is especially drawn to ancient Greek, Roman, and Islamic glass and ceramic objects. With equal parts reverence and play, she reinterprets these ancient works using recycled plastic bottles. Conceptually, her interest is in the dialogue between the rare, ancient works we value in museums and our contemporary throw-away plastic culture. Formally, her interest is in the exploration of structure, scale, texture, color, opacity, and translucency. Mendelson received an MFA from the State University of New York at New Paltz, and a BFA from Arizona State University. Mendelson has been the recipient of four New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowships (1987, 1997, 2011, 2017), a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellow (2017), and a Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant (1989). She has been artist-in-residence at Pilchuck, Stanwood, Washington (2019), Yaddo, Saratoga, New York (2018), The MacDowell Colony, Peterborough, New Hampshire (2018), The Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio (2017), The Studio at The Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, New York (2015), The Bau Institute/ Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France (2014), and UrbanGlass in Brooklyn, New York (2014). She has had solo exhibitions at Tibor de Nagy, The Hunterdon Art Museum, UrbanGlass, Todd Merrill Studio, Pierogi, Black + Herron Space, New York City, John Davis Gallery, Hudson, New York, and has participated in numerous two-person and group exhibitions at museums and galleries. Her work is in the permanent collection of The RISD Museum, Providence, The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, The Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburg, The Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, and The Museum of Old and New Art, Tasmania, Australia.