Contact: Sarah Clark-Langager, director of the Western Gallery, (360) 650-3963, sarah.clarklangager@wwu.edu

©Gerri Ondrizek, Cellular - film with set of prints and drawings, 2008

BELLINGHAM – The Western Gallery will present artist Geraldine Ondrizek’s “The Sound of Cells Dividing” as its first major exhibition of the 2009-2010 academic year. The exhibit will be on display from Sept. 28 through Nov. 25.

An artist and professor at Reed College in Portland, Ore., for the past 20 years, Ondrizek has created architectural scaled works that house medical and biological information. Since 2001, she has worked with medical professionals to gather images of human cellular tissue and genetic tests relating to ethnic identity and disease and then has used this information in her installations, films and drawings.

“The Sound of Cells Dividing” will exhibit Ondrizek’s recent film “Cellular” and its corresponding set of drawings of a blastocyst, a multiple-cell embryo, as well as her “Sound Wall” installation, which was created for the Center for Art and Technology (CAMAC) and housed in a 17th century monastery in France. “Sound Wall” will be recreated for the Western Gallery and will comprise three spaces created by handmade paper walls embedded with recordings of healthy and cancerous cells dividing that were captured by Andrew Pelling, a biophysicist at UCLA.

In conjunction with the exhibition, Ondrizek will offer a lecture about her work on Wednesday, Oct. 21. For information on the time and location of her lecture, visit http://westerngallery.wwu.edu/ or call (360) 650-3900.

Both the lecture and the exhibition are free and open to the public.

Ondrizek was the recipient of a Mellon Foundation Faculty Development Award in 2008. While on sabbatical in 2008-09, Ondrizek exhibited her work and lectured at Columbia College in Chicago, The Royal College of Art and Goldsmiths College, both in London, the University of Washington in Seattle and The Conference for Art and Society in Venice, Italy. In 2006, Ondrizek won the Oregon Council Award. She has been an artist in residence at CAMAC in France, Gasworks in London, the Women’s Studio in New York and the Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh.

The Western Gallery offers Western Washington University and the community diverse experiences in the visual arts while providing a point of reference to the national and international art scene. The Gallery creates an environment for learning through historical, contemporary and experimental art exhibitions; through the outdoor collection of contemporary culture; through publications; and through interpretative interdisciplinary programs. The Gallery serves as a center for discussion and exchange of ideas on critical issues in contemporary art and plays a large role in expanding audiences’ understanding of the visual arts.

Gallery hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday, except Wednesdays, when the gallery is open until 8 p.m., and noon to 4 p.m. on Saturdays. Live music and poetry readings frequently are presented in the Gallery on Wednesday evenings. For more event details, visit http://westerngallery.wwu.edu/.

Print-quality images are available in the University Communications Photo Center.

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