Red Lodge Clay Center – Short-Term Resident (AIA) 2011
Colleen Toledano is a mixed media ceramic and installation artist residing in Buffalo, NY and an Associate Professor of Art at Buffalo State College. She holds a Master of Fine Arts in ceramics from Ohio University (2005). Autobiographically inspired, she creates sculpture and environments that are influenced by the ever-changing moments in her life. She was a resident artist recipient of the Evelyn Shapiro Foundation Fellowship in 2008 at The Clay Studio in Philadelphia, PA. and the 2005 Philip C. Curtis Artist-In-Residence in Ceramics at Albion College, Albion, Michigan. Her work has been exhibited in Winter Solstice IV, both at the Westchester Arts Council, White Plains, New York and The Studio: An Alternative Space for Contemporary Art in Armonk, New York. She has also exhibited at The Clay Studio and the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia; The Sculpture Center, in Cleveland, Ohio Kasia Kay Art Projects in Chicago, Illinois; The State Museum of Alaska, Juneau, AK; and the Millard Grand Project, St. Pancras Chambers, London. She has had numerous residencies and given lectures at places including 26 International Symposium of Ceramics in Becyne Residency, Bechyne, CZ, Red Lodge Clay Center in Montana; Tyler School of Art, PA; Houston Center for Contemporary Craft; Concordia University in Montreal; University of Alaska Anchorage, AK; California State University, CA; and Chicago Institute of Art, IL. In 2016, she was nominated for a United State Artist Fellowship and in 2019 was a finalist for a Sustainable Arts Foundation Award.
Traditions are made to be followed and broken.
In my own life I consider the traditions that I have grown up with and the importance to continue them with my own family. By continuing them I allow the past to live on or by changing them I allow for my own traditions to begin. By breaking or building from these traditions it gives room for the birth, growth and looking forward.