Rematerializing the surrounding planet through 3D printing and emerging technologies to promote, inspire and educate about the natural environment, climate change and biodiversity.
My work combines art, scienceand technology in an attempt to bring awareness to current environmental concerns and the planet's stunning yet curious wonders.
Background
Darlene Farris-LaBar, a Professor of Art + Design at East Stroudsburg University, received her MFA in Sculpture at SUNY, Purchase College, a BFA in Sculpture from Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and an AAS in Digital Media Arts from the College of Technology of NYC. Her art requires environmental interaction and the studying of a variety of eco-systems and various plant species through the use of 3D digitally design, 3D printing and other areas of emerging technologies. Farris-LaBar has been represented by Women in 3D, The Additivist Cookbook and was listed as the top 30 most influential woman in 3D printing. Her work has been represented internationally in places such as Brazil, Sweden, and Shanghai. It also recently traveled to the Onassis Cultural Center in Athens, 3D Pioneer Challenge: Pushing the Boundaries exhibition in Europe and with 3D PrintShow to New York City, California, London, Paris, and Dubai. She has presented her work at “Conference on Communication and Environment” in Boulder, Colorado about Bridging Divides: Spaces of Scholarship and Practice in Environmental Communication and “At Last Which Thrives: 3D Printing Plants Indigenous to Specific Regions” in Athens, Greece.
During the Fall of 2014, she had two solo exhibitions that presented her 3D printed flowers. One show was in the Art Lab at Columbus State University in Georgia and the other show at the Madelon.” The shows offered 3D printed sculptures, video and photography of native plants significant to the Pocono Region. Also this fall, she exhibited in a group show called “Uncommon Denominator II” at the E.O. Bull Center, at West Chester University. She exhibited a large-scale sculpture and video art installation about bees in San Paulo, Brazil at the Biblioteca Brasiliana in a show called Naturates. She also gave a presentation at the International Conference of Art and Nature. Additional presentations about her work were given in 2013 in both Sweden and Shanghai. In January 2012 she had a retrospective of her work at the Wu Xing Gallery in Shanghai, China. She was also recently honored to exhibit her work called “Water Has No Boundaries” at both the Fine Arts Gallery at Westchester Community College in New York and the Phillips Museum at Franklin & Marshall College. This sculpture was composed of over 900 bottles of water samples from 60 various locations. In November 2011, she lectured and presented her art at the Visualizing Science and the Environment symposium at the University of Brighton, UK. In 2010 she had a solo show in the Sykes Gallery at Millersville University called Rhythms of a Whole. It was a multimedia environmental art installation with sculpture, illustrations, video, and sound (combining harmonic melodies of monks and honey bees) about the importance of bees. In 2008, she had a solo show in the Madelon Powers Gallery at East Stroudsburg called “A Symphony on Shallow Waters.” This was also a multimedia environmental art installation about the fragile waters of both vernal pools and saltwater marshes. In the past, she has been commissioned to create and weld two large-scale permanent sculptures. One sculpture located near Pittsburgh, PA is made of recycled steel and weighs over two hundred tons.