Aileen Bassis Biography Aileen Bassis was born in New York City. She attended the High School of Music and Art and received a B.A. in Studio Art from SUNY at Binghamton in l971 and a M.A. in Creative Art from Hunter College in l976. She received a Fellowship in Photography from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts in l999, a residency in 2002 to the Frans Masereel Graphic Center in Belgium, a Dodge Fellowship to the Vermont Studio Center in 2004 and a residency to the Nelimarkka Museum in Finland in 2006. She was awarded a grant from the Puffin Foundation in 2007 and a residency at the Baztille Guest Studio in the Netherlands for August, 2008. She concentrated on drawing, graphics and painting as a student. She's a self-taught photographer and began working in photography in 1975. She first exhibited her photographs in l977 at Foto Gallery in NYC. She uses her photographs to create groups of altered books, handmade books, monoprints, and installations. She has exhibited her work in one person shows at University of Pennsylvania, Moravian College, PA; RH Oosterom Gallery in NYC, the Hudson D. Walker Gallery in Provincetown, the Seigfred Gallery at Ohio University, the Griffin Gallery in NJ; and in New York City at the Ceres Project Room and at Gallery 402 of the Organization of Independent Artists. She has exhibited in numerous group exhibitions in museums, galleries and colleges including the Jersey City Museum, Queens Museum, the Hunterdon Museum of Art, Gallery 1101 at the University of Southern Illinois, Morehead State University in Kentucky, Passaic County Community College's Broadway Gallery, Raritan Valley Community College, Gallery Aferro, City Without Walls, and Rutgers University in Newark, and in many New York City galleries including Ceres Gallery, Sylvia White Gallery, and NurtureArt Gallery. Ms. Bassis is also an art educator in New Jersey. For the past several years, her work has centered around issues—disease (in particular, AIDS and breast cancer), immigration, the Holocaust, anti-Semitism, child abuse and neglect, the use of psychiatric drugs for children, the war and 9/11, and social inequities between the races. Her artwork functions to call attention to particular concerns that spiral into the political and general social realm. Home Page Gallery |