New exhibit at GOCA 1420 featuring Eric Tillinghast’s monumental “RainMachine” opens to the public Thursday, August 30th

The University of Colorado Colorado Springs Galleries of Contemporary Art announces a new exhibit opening Thursday, August 30th, 2012 featuring artist Eric Tillinghast. RAIN MACHINE will be a massive, site-specific water installation in the 2,800 square foot campus gallery by Northern Californiabased Tillinghast.

The public is invited to a free reception for the exhibit from 5 – 9pm on Thursday, August 30th with a public Artist’s Talk at 7:30pm. The exhibit will be on display through December 7, 2012 with a related lecture series planned titled H20: Water, Culture & Politics and other events planned throughout the display period. RAIN MACHINE will spark relevant and timely meditations and dialogue around the vast topic of water.

Tillinghast has been working with water as a sculptural material since 1994 when he established a studio in Santa Fe, New Mexico, after studying art at the Virginska Konst Skolan in Orebro, Sweden, and Western State University, in Colorado, and completing an Industrial Welding program in Santa Barbara, California.

Tillinghast has exhibited an “ongoing series of sculptures, installations, and projects in which it is the primary subject and medium” across the United States and internationally in London, Brussels, and Germany. He has been awarded grants from The Pollock-Krasner Foundation, the Land Rheinland-Phalz Kulturministerium in Germany, and the Dallas Museum of Art, and residencies from the Kohler Company, in Wisconsin, Centre-Est-Nord-Est, in Quebec, and Alafoss, in Reykjavik, Iceland. In 2008 he completed his first public art project for Portland State University, in Portland, Oregon, and is currently working on projects for the Port of San Diego and the City of Cleveland.

Tillinghast will be in residence on the UCCS campus for three weeks, during which time he will share his process and work with UCCS students, faculty and the greater community who are volunteering to help create the project.

1420 Austin Bluffs Pkwy | Colorado Springs. CO 80918 | 719.255.3504 | www.galleryuccs.org | gallery@uccs.edu