This summer, Xia Gao, Art, Art History, and Design Associate Professor is having her artwork showcased both nationally and internationally. Her recent projects are meant to interact with the sites and have nature as content and backdrop.

“These designs are inspired by the sites and their natural environments and the themes that relate to public concern, such as water use and personal contemplation to life happenings,” Gao said. “The project I proposed for I-Park 2017 residency and biennale, entitled ‘One Life, One Spring,’ was intended to reflect on human’s short existence as to nature. It drew from the Chinese idiom ‘人活一世，草木一春’ that means ‘Man has but one life, grass sees but one spring’ to say the brevity of human existence. It has been further inspired by nature to express broader perspectives.”

Gao draws joy from her artwork and enjoys the process as a whole. She says she loves seeing the project take shape as the process plays out.

“The discoveries in the making process,” said Gao when asked what she enjoyed most about creating her artwork. “The project is constantly shaped by place, chosen sites, funding and available materials, technical experimentations, obstacles, and other elements in the execution; it has evolved and changed to find the final form for concept expression.”

Gao hopes the audiences “are not only engaged by visual from the interplay of material, color, shape, site, etc., but also encouraged to ponder on human life: the strength, the shortness, and its meaning in relation to family, society, and nature.” Meanwhile, it opens to different responses and interpretations that often enriches what I originally hoped for.

Nationally, Gao’s artwork can be seen this summer at these places:

• A special residency at I-Park Foundation in East Haddam, Connecticut.
• Site-responsive installations for the 2017 Site-Responsive Art Biennale.
• A new outdoor exhibition, Rinse, on public display as part of the Point of View exhibition at Heritage Museum and Garden in Sandwich, Massachusettes.
• 2017 Waterloo Arts Fest Juried Exhibition in Cleveland, Ohio.
• Words in Characters, Books as Vehicle, at Oklahoma State University Museum.
• Stanford University’s East Asia Library, Shifting Landscapes, at Form and Concept Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
• Spectacular Skies at Annmarie Sculpture Garden & Arts Center in Dowell, Maryland.

Internationally, Gao is featured at:

• Miniartextil Borderline in Como, Italy.
• The 8th International Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary Mini Textile Art, Scythia, in Kherson/Ivano-Frankivs’k, Ukraine.