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CV:  Click here to view current CV (a new window will open showing the PDF).

 

Bio:

Tanzanight was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio.  She earned her BA in Integrative Studies, combining Art, Botany, and Environmental Studies, from Warren Wilson College (Asheville, North Carolina).  Tanzanight earned her BFA in Painting from the Cleveland Institute of Art (Cleveland, Ohio).

She has held employment positions in botanical gardens, production gardens and greenhouses, in the wholesale floral industry, with floral designers, and event decor production companies.  This cumulative experience with plants ever drives the content and inquiry in her art practice, predominantly expressed through paintings.

She has exhibited in galleries, institutions of higher education, a perfumery boutique, a dance theater, gardens, and project spaces in Ohio, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Colorado, California, and Oregon. She was awarded "Best in Show" in the Sumi-e Painting: Traditional and Emerging Expressions exhibit at Niza Knoll Gallery in 2018.  She was selected by American painter, Will Cotton, as the First Alternate Artist to participate in the Master Artist Residency #176 at Atlantic Center for the Arts in 2020.  Tanzanight currently lives and works in Miami, Florida.

About the Name:

Tanzanight was born before dawn during the longest night of the year*, and proved to be a remarkable night owl even as a toddler.  Since childhood, her most favorite hue has been blue-violet.  While the practices of the mining industry do not align with her ethics, she cannot help but feel awed by the appearance of the gem, tanzanite, known for its blue-violet radiance.  The artist has thought that, if she could metaphorically exist as another material from within the earth, why not that stone?  If performers have stage names, and writers have pen names, why not visual artists (in addition to street artists)?  So, with a perpetual deep love for the nighttime, and admiration for the ethereal-looking, shorter, high-energy wavelengths in the visible spectrum, she is Tanzanight. The soul name surfaced up from within around 2001; it has remained her artist identity ever since.

*in the Northern Hemisphere.

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