Join us for an afternoon of conversation with William Mazza, the artist behind of our current exhibit “Forest for Trees: Mining the Literary Landscape.”

William Mazza is a Brooklyn, NY visual artist rooted in community-based collaborative arts, with a focus on art as a form of popular communication.

Mazza received a BFA in painting from Syracuse University in 1989 and lived in Syracuse until 2000.  During his time in Syracuse he worked with the Nonviolent Action Committee (NAC), the Syracuse Peace Council, the cooperative State of The Art gallery, the Altered Space gallery collective, East Side Neighborhood Arts (ENACT), Syracuse Alternative Media Network (SAMN), and “Sing It Down: Songs to Close the School of the Americas.

After moving to Brooklyn he became involved with the feminist avant-garde Belladonna* Collaborative, and Arts for Art, an organization advancing African American improvisational arts. Over time this involvement led to the development of a live, improvised painting and video practice collaborating with musicians, dancers, and writers.

William Mazza uses chance, duration, and accumulation to interpret landscape as the relationship of people to mediated environments. The most material expressions of this wide-ranging project are drawings, paintings, animations, and video created by translating subjects such as lived environments, spatial relocations, television programs, or text into constructions of landscape.