Michelle Illuminato

Ausbildung: 1996 University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, Master of Fine Arts
1992 Carnegie Mellon University - Pittsburgh, PA, Bachelor of Fine Arts, Honors

Berufungen (Auswahl):
Visiting Artist, Assistant Professor, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh
1999-2003 Assistant Professor, Coordinator First Year Program, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, OH
1998-99 Research Fellow, Studio for Creative Inquiry, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh

Stipendien und Preise (Auswahl)
1999 Pennsylvania Council for the Arts Grant, Drive-In Project
1999 Puffin Foundation Grant, New Jersey, Drive-In Project
1997 A.W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust Fund, Pittsburgh Foundation.
1997 Various funding/support for South Side Atlas including - STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, Carnegie Mellon University, Typecraft, Pittsburgh Filmmakers, Brew House Association.
1996 University of Wisconsin, Wausau Campus, Marathon Center, Exhibition Award

Lebt und arbeitet in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA

Moving: House site to home sight

The house draws us in and calls attention to home and yet is not home. Home moves with us from house to house. It moves with us while we travel through the world. At times it goes unnoticed. It exists as shadowy images that haunt our daily life. Yet, it is during house-moving, when we lose the image of house as home, that we recognize that we are always moving towards true-home.

Unlike the house that we organize and attend to, true-home remains scattered about, ungoverned and tendless. Time and personal experience are the foundation of true-home. And yet this foundation exists solidly without site or resting place. In moving we understand this. As we gather our things that we cannot leave behind, we are also gathering our true-home, full of ever changing comforts and feelings, experiences, questions, misgivings and horror. We glimpse the shadows and fleeting images of true-home. Yet true-home is never completely in sight. It exists in the journey, the moving.

True-home

Houselessness prompts the search anew. Without our home-shells, like naked snails, we search for that comfort, we recognize it, we begin to believe we possess it, we become comfortable and our search slows. We find shelter again. We forget. Once again our house is our home.

The inspiration for this installation was found in Martin Heidegger's 1951 Darmstadt lecture, Building Dwelling Thinking, as well as in the experience of my recent house-move.

Installation im Garten Riad

Richard-Wagner-Weg 45