Avantika Bawa, artist and WSU Vancouver professor, has an art exhibit currently on display in the Portland Art Museum.
The exhibit, which celebrates the Veterans Memorial Coliseum, began Aug. 18 and will continue through Feb. 10, 2019. Featured in the Apex (the fourth floor) of the museum, Bawa’s architectural and geographical art style is portrayed through her work.
A Portland-based artist from New Delhi, India, Bawa received her master’s degree in fine arts in painting from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a bachelor’s degree in fine arts in painting from The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda in India. Disjecta Contemporary Art Center and White Box, an exhibition space at the University of Oregon, also featured her work.
Bawa also had work in the Schneider Museum in Ashland, Oregon and in the Suyama Space, a non-profit gallery specifically for installation work in Seattle.
Since 2010, Bawa has been one of two full-time faculty in the WSU Vancouver Fine Arts Department, adding that the program is “still relatively young, but super strong.”
Before moving to Portland, Bawa taught in Georgia. “After 10 years of living in Georgia, I wanted to explore another part of the country, so I decided to move away and try something completely different and I landed in the Pacific Northwest,” she explained.
Bawa stated she enjoys working with a university not specifically catered to fine arts, but that uses fine arts to complement other disciplines.
Her latest exhibit focuses on commemorating the Veterans Memorial Coliseum. When describing her work, Bawa said she brings an architectural and minimalist approach to represent her appreciation of the Coliseum.
“I’m interested in the Coliseum because it’s visual form, but initially I got interested in it because it’s where the [Portland Trail] Blazers won the one and only championship,” Bawa said about her inspiration for the exhibit in the Portland Art Museum.
Bawa discussed how minimalism serves as a big motivation for her work.
“Working with a very reductionist and spared down vocabulary because a lot of what I see around me is just so excessive and busy,” Bawa said. “I’m more drawn to that which is really subdued and simplified because it has so much more power in it.”
Before being appointed to her current role as the curator of the Northwest section of the Portland Art Museum, Grace Kook-Anderson spoke with Bawa about one of her previous pieces. Once appointed as curator, while talking over poke bowls, Kook-Anderson asked Bawa if she would like a show in the Apex in the Portland Art Museum.
“It was the best poke bowl I’ve ever had,” Bawa said, reflecting on the opportunity that day brought her.
“There was nothing else I really wanted to do,” Bawa said, explaining how her interests in geography and psychology expand into her artwork and how she has always practiced drawing and painting.
Bawa added how observing the landscapes surrounding the gallery she works in helps frame her exhibits. For example, an exhibit she did last year in Los Angeles rested on the San Andreas Fault.
“That was the trigger to the work I did which was eventually called Parallel Faults; it was a response to the fault zone in that area,” Bawa said.
Recently named one of five Hallie Ford Fellowship winners in the visual arts, Bawa was granted $25,000 to continue pursuing her artwork.
Applying for the fellowship requires a submission of 10 pieces of artwork. Bawa said she had applied for the fellowship in the past. When referencing the work she submitted this time around she said, “I tried to show them 10 images that show my journey, which is something I hadn’t done in the past – I would show what I thought were the 10 best.”
Bawa added, “A friend of mine said ‘No, dig deeper and show them work that’s also seven years old so they can see how far you’ve come – they want to hear your story.’”
“It was very humbling and a huge honor. More than the monetary award, but the recognition statewide,” Bawa said about receiving the Hallie Ford Fellowship award.
Using her fellowship award money, Bawa plans to travel to Iceland, where she recently returned from. Once there, she plans to construct a scaffold art installation.
“The scaffolds are typically a functional object, but when presented as ‘art’ they more easily reveal many interesting aspects of their forms; the play with positive and negative spaces, the lines of the shadows, the contrast between the horizontal and vertical stripes,” Bawa said about her scaffolding work.
She has worked with similar scaffolding in both Astoria, Oregon and Bombay, India. “I just want to go to Iceland and install a bright pink scaffold in the middle of nowhere,” Bawa said.
According to Bawa, her most defining experience as an artist is, “Knowing that even after I finish what I think is one of the best works, there’s still more to come. The more you do the more you realize you can do.”
Along with her recent exhibition at the Portland Art Museum, Bawa works with WSU Vancouver senior and intern, Riana Vincent. The two lead WSU Vancouver’s first ever fine arts club, Art X.
Vincent, a Humanities major with a Fine Arts minor, interned with Bawa over the summer and worked on the Veterans Memorial Coliseum exhibit at the Portland Art Museum.
“Our goal with the club is to get people into the different mediums that they may not have time to take a class for,” Vincent said. “I think it’s incredibly important that we have this here at [the Vancouver] campus. This is a great way to start that process, to expand the art community through our school and through our campus, and not just have to bounce off Pullman’s.”
Art X is brand new, with 10 members currently and over 100 people signed up at the recent fall Involvement Fair, according to Vincent.
Bawa is the adviser for Art X. “I’ve been waiting for this club for eight years and it’s finally happening,” Bawa said. “I want us at WSU Vancouver to see how much exists culturally in the community around us.”
Vincent believes Art X is important for inspiring artists, “It allows them to see that they don’t have to critique themselves so harshly,” she said. “We want to make sure it’s not just fine arts students.”
Correction: September 21, 2018
An earlier version of this article implied that curator Grace Kook-Anderson asked artist Avantika Bawa if she would like a show in the Apex of the Portland Art Museum, prior to Kook-Anderson being appointed the curator of the Northwest section of the Portland Art Museum. Kook-Anderson did converse with Bawa before being appointed curator. However, Kook-Anderson’s offer to Bawa to be in the Portland Art Museum came after she had become curator.
Anna Nelson is the Editor in Chief for the VanCougar. She is a senior and is studying strategic communications.