The President has appointed Teresita Fernández of New York to serve a four-year term on the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts in Washington DC, effective October 6, 2011.
Ms. Fernández is a sculptor and visual artist whose works—often large in scale and inspired by landscape and natural phenomena—explore issues of perception and seeing. Her commissions include the recent site-specific installation Blind Blue Landscape at the Bennesee Art site in Naoshima, Japan; Fire at the Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia; and Seattle Cloud Cover, a permanent installation commissioned by the Seattle Art Museum for the recently opened Olympic Sculpture Park. She has been featured in solo exhibitions at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington DC; the Institute for Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; the Miami Art Museum; the Museum of Modern Art in Forth Worth, TX; and the Castello di Rivoli in Turin, Italy.
Ms. Fernández is the recipient of a 2005 MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2003, and a Louis Comfort Tiffany Biennial Award in 1999; she had a resident affiliated fellowship at the American Academy in Rome in 1999. She is a graduate of Florida International University, (BFA) and Virginia Commonwealth University (MFA) and has been a visiting artist at Princeton University. She serves on the board of trustees of Artpace, a foundation for contemporary art in San Antonio, TX. Ms. Fernández lives and works in New York City.