The Providence River Cover Up
Artist:
Allison Bianco
Allison Bianco is a printmaker who uses a combination of intaglio and screen print to depict landscapes diminished by massive oceans and infinite skies. Her vibrant prints explore nostalgia and inconsistencies of memory. Allison Bianco received her MFA in Printmaking (2010) from the University of Hawai’i at Manoa, Honolulu, HI and her BA in Studio Art (2001) from Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, MA. Bianco has recently been awarded a public art commission for New York City public school 671K in Brooklyn for a new, permanent site-specific artwork. The commission is through the New York City School Construction Authority, Public Art for Public Schools program in collaboration with the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, Percent for Art program for the collection of the New York City Department of Education. Bianco is the recent recipient of a Rhode Island State Council on the Arts (RISCA) Project Grant (2019). Her work is in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA; The New York Public Library, NY; RISD Museum, RI; University of San Diego, CA; Yale University Art Gallery, CT; and the Hawai’i State Foundation on Culture and the Arts, HI; among others. Allison Bianco lives and works in Rhode Island and her work is represented by Cade Tompkins Projects in Providence, RI.
The Providence River Cover Up explores the outlet of the Providence River from the vantage point of East Providence, RI. The landscape shows a nearly 100-year-old view of railroad tracks that traveled by the harbor. Over the century, much of the waterway has been hardened over and covered, as its function as a port diminished. Abstracted graphic shapes and orange caution flags serve to underline these changes and allude to warnings on the horizon and the contemporary reality of rising tides. The title of the work lends itself to the storied and romanticized versions of Providence mob history as much as it references an oftentimes purposeful erasure of certain histories in favor of more popular and palatable ones.
The Providence River Cover Up was completed with support from a Rhode Island State Council on the Arts Project Grant. It was printed with Lois Harada on the Takach etching press at the AS220 Community Printshop, Providence, RI.
The Providence River Cover Up
The Providence River Cover Up - detail
The Providence River Cover Up - detail
The Providence River Cover Up - detail
The Providence River Cover Up - detail
The Providence River Cover Up - detail
Sources included: ""View of Providence Harbor & the Four Bridges," by Archibald Ellis, c. 1910, reproduced in Between Land and sea: the Atlantic Coast and the transformation of New England by Christopher L. Pastore; Chromatic Balloon View of Narragansett Bay published by C. A. Pabodie & Son; and Marvels of Nature, Science & Art.