Fernanda D'Agostino is an American artist and sculptor from

Portland, Oregon Portland (, ) is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers, Portland is the county seat of Multnomah County, the most populous co ...

. Her 30-year career includes works that "integrated personal, societal and environmental concerns" into public art installations. Her new media works frequently incorporate technically sophisticated interactive elements. D'Agostino was awarded a

Bonnie Bronson Fellowship The Bonnie Bronson Fellowship, named after American painter and sculptor Bonnie Bronson, is an award presented annually to Pacific Northwest artists. Recipients * Christine Bourdette (1992) * Judy Cooke (1993) * Ronna Neuenschwander (1994) * ...

in 1995, a Flintridge Foundation Award for visual artists in 2002, and an

Oregon Arts Commission The Oregon Arts Commission is a governor-appointed body of nine commissioners who allocate grants for artists based in the U.S. state of Oregon. It receives the bulk of its funding through the National Endowment for the Arts, the state, and the Or ...

Fellowship in 2016 among other honors. Monographs on D'Agostino's work have been published twice by

The Art Gym The Art Gym is a nonprofit, noncollecting contemporary arts exhibition space at Marylhurst University in Marylhurst, Oregon near Portland, United States. The Art Gym is devoted to the artwork of the Pacific Northwest supporting retrospectives, m ...

, ''Offering: An installation'' in 1989 and ''Method of Loci'' in 2013. Her work is held in the collections of the Houston Museum of Fine Art, the

Yellowstone Art Museum The Yellowstone Art Museum in downtown Billings, Montana is the largest contemporary art museum in Montana. History and mission of the museum The Yellowstone Art Center (now the Yellowstone Art Museum, or YAM) opened in October 1964 in the former ...

, and the Missoula Museum of the Arts.

Career

D'Agostino studied at George Washington University/The Corcoran School, earned her BS in Education at the College of New Jersey in 1973 and her MFA in Sculpture from the

University of Montana The University of Montana (UM) is a public research university in Missoula, Montana. UM is a flagship institution of the Montana University System and its second largest campus. UM reported 10,962 undergraduate and graduate students in the fal ...

in 1984. D'Agostino's work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including at the

Hermitage Museum The State Hermitage Museum ( rus, Государственный Эрмитаж, r=Gosudarstvennyj Ermitaž, p=ɡəsʊˈdarstvʲɪn(ː)ɨj ɪrmʲɪˈtaʂ, links=no) is a museum of art and culture in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It is the list of ...

in St. Petersburg, Russia in Russia's largest annual New Media Festival, ‘CYBERFEST’ in 2012. In 2013,

presented a retrospective exhibition of D'Agostino's work, ''The Method of Loci'' which was described in

Artforum ''Artforum'' is an international monthly magazine specializing in contemporary art. The magazine is distinguished from other magazines by its unique 10½ x 10½ inch square format, with each cover often devoted to the work of an artist. Notabl ...

as "a feast of sensory experience and symbolic power." Her video installation, ''Borderline'', is the first encountered in the 2019 exhibition at the

Portland Art Museum The Portland Art Museum in Portland, Oregon, United States, was founded in 1892, making it one of the oldest art museums on the West Coast and seventh oldest in the US. Upon completion of the most recent renovations, the Portland Art Museum becam ...

entitled ''The map is not the territory'', "the central event for the Center for Northwest Art

hat A hat is a head covering which is worn for various reasons, including protection against weather conditions, ceremonial reasons such as university graduation, religious reasons, safety, or as a fashion accessory. Hats which incorporate mecha ...

is the Arlene and Harold Schnitzer Curator of Northwest Art, Grace Kook-Anderson’s reimagining of its Contemporary Northwest Art Awards (CNAA) exhibition." Critic Laurel Reed-Pavic called it, "a standout show."

Public art works

D’Agostino has been commissioned to make many major public works of art. ''Garden of Strength'', 2008, is installed at the Mayfair Community Center in the

Mayfair Mayfair is an affluent area in the West End of London towards the eastern edge of Hyde Park, in the City of Westminster, between Oxford Street, Regent Street, Piccadilly and Park Lane. It is one of the most expensive districts in the world. ...

neighborhood of San Jose,

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

. It was inspired by the diversity, and the rich cultural history, of the Mayfair area and by the spirit of growth and renewal embodied in the flourishing Mayfair Community Garden adjacent to the site. ''Intellectual Ecosystem'' is located at the Portland State University Associated Student Recreation Center and was noted as one of 2011's 40 best public artworks in the United States and Canada by the Americans for the Arts “Public Art Year in Review.”. '' Urban Hydrology'' is a series of twelve outdoor 2009 granite sculptures installed along the Portland Transit Mall, part of the City of Portland and Multnomah County Public Art Collection courtesy of the

Regional Arts & Culture Council The Regional Arts & Culture Council (RACC) is an organization that administers arts grants in Multnomah, Washington, and Clackamas Counties that also do advocacy in the Portland metropolitan area in Oregon, United States. It evolved from the city� ...

. ''Celestial Navigation'' is an 18-foot-tall (5.5 m) glass and metal sculpture of a navigational quadrant in the International Boulevard plaza of SeaTac/Airport light rail station. ''Fluid Dynamics'' is on the Waterfront Bay Trail at 66th Avenue in Oakland, California commissioned by the City of Oakland and East Bay Regional Park District.

References

External links

Interview with the artist] {{DEFAULTSORT:D'Agostino, Fernanda Living people American artists Artists from Portland, Oregon Year of birth missing (living people) 20th-century American women artists 21st-century American women artists George Washington University alumni University of Montana alumni