Wheaton Conversations: 
Norwood Viviano & Dr. Jennifer Kitson

Watch the Dec. 3, 2020 recording above

During this virtual Wheaton Conversations event, artist Norwood Viviano will share his artistic process and the evolution of his work following his WheatonArts residency, including a new collaborative project with Dr. Jen Kitson. Together they set out to generate new understandings of place through research and creative response to the legacy of glass in South Jersey. Norwood and Jen will discuss their experience working with Rowan University students in the WheatonArts Glass Studio and Museum of American Glass to explore the South Jersey glass arts and heritage landscape from a cross-disciplinary lens. They will share observations and discoveries resulting from this exploratory and collaborative engagement with history and place.

This event is part of “Wheaton Conversations,” a new virtual series highlighting select artists with ties to WheatonArts! To see the full schedule of conversations, Click Here. 

Norwood Viviano’s work is about change. Utilizing digital 3D computer modeling and printing technology in tandem with glass blowing and casting processes, he creates work depicting population shifts tied to the dynamic between industry and community. By showing how landscapes and populations move and are modified as a result of industry, his work creates a 3D lens to view that which is invisible or forgotten. His use of blown glass forms and vinyl cut drawings are micro-models of macro changes at the regional, national, and international levels.

Viviano’s work from his installation Cities: Departure & Deviation was shown at the 2014 Architecture Biennale in Venice. His work has been the subject of solo museum exhibitions at the Grand Rapids Art Museum, Chrysler Museum of Art and included in group exhibitions at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston and the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Renwick Gallery. Norwood received a BFA from Alfred University and an MFA in Sculpture from the Cranbrook Academy of Art. His pieces are held in the collections of the Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, NY, deYoung Museum, San Francisco, CA; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Museum of Decorative Arts, Prague, CZ; Shanghai Museum of Glass, Shanghai, China; and the Museum of Glass, Tacoma, WA, as well as in private collections. Norwood is currently an Associate Professor and Sculpture Program Coordinator at Grand Valley State University.

Jennifer Kitson is an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Art and Geography, Planning, and Sustainability at Rowan University. She is an urban cultural geographer with research interests in the geo humanities, a field at the nexus of geography, art, and humanities. Her scholarship explores the role of the senses, emotions, and memories in the experience of place.

She is the 2019-20 New Jersey Council for the Humanities Water-Ways Environmental Humanities Scholar leading an NJCH funded project exploring the connections between people, place, and water through public storytelling. She has published her research in leading cultural geography journals and has collaborated with artists, historians, and community members on public scholarship projects. Her courses emphasize community-based, experiential learning, and public engagement as critical practices for understanding place and creative placemaking.​​