Patricia Olynyk

Patricia Olynyk is a Canadian born American multimedia artist, scholar and educator whose work explores art, science and technology-related themes and expands viewer awareness of the effect of visual phenomena. Her collaborations across science, medicine and artistic disciplines explore the mind-brain, interspecies communication, and the environment.

Olynyk's collaborations on third culture projects uncover the deeper meaning behind the history and evolution of science and technology; how people, culture and institutions shape the understanding of science, history and the natural world.

Her collaborations across disciplines often include microscopy and biomedical imaging, and are described as "something uncanny... where one's consciousness can neither respond in a unified way to the bodily sensations or float free in imaginary space; it is caught in the in-between."She is "particularly interested in how images exist within and between multiple spaces and how they are encountered by so called "disciplinary specific trained experts" and the lay audience."

Influenced by the early work of the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the art and visual perception theories of Rudolf Arnheim, Olynyk was one of the first artists in the US appointed to a university science unit, is listed as one of the 66 Brilliant Women in Creative Technology, and has programmed art, science and technology curriculum, symposiums and fellowships at research institutions.

Solo exhibitions include Sensing Terrains at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C., Dark Skies at the Art I Sci Center Gallery at UCLA, Transfigurations at Galeria Grafica Tokio, Japan, and in New York with Ellen Levy, Skeptical Inquirers at the Sidney Mishkin Gallery, Sleuthing the Mind at the Pratt Manhattan Gallery, and Ephemeral: Unraveling History at the Ruth S. Harley Gallery. Her work has been featured at Palazzo Michiel dalle Colonne for Venice Design 2018, the Los Angeles International Biennial, The Brooklyn Museum, the Saitama Modern Art Museum in Japan, Museo del Corso in Rome, and The Banff Centre for the Arts in Canada. She is represented by the Bruno David Gallery.

Former Chair of the Leonardo Education and Art Forum, a branch of the International Society for the Arts, Science, and Technology.Olynyk co-directs the Leonardo/ISAST New York LASER program with Ellen K. Levy, promoting cross-disciplinary exchange between artists, scientists, and scholars.

Recipient of awards including a Helmut S. Stern Fellowship at the Institute for the Humanities, University of Michigan and a Francis C. Wood Fellowship at the College of Physicians, Philadelphia,Olynyk's residencies include the UCLA’s Design Media Arts Department, the Banff Center for the Arts, Villa Montalvo, California, and the University of Applied Arts Vienna.

Olynyk received an MFA with Distinction from California College of the Arts, and to conduct research in Japan, a Monbusho Scholarship and Tokyu Foundation Research Scholarship.

Prior to joining Washington University in 2007 as Director of the Graduate School of Art Olynyk was an Associate Professor at the University of Michigan's School of Art & Design, and director of the Penny W. Stamps Distinguished Visitors Program and the Roman J. Witt Visiting Faculty Program, supporting cross-disciplinary discourse and research. In 2005, she became the first non-scientist appointed to the University’s Life Sciences Institute.

• Creature Comforts and the Ties that Bind, Public Journal 59: Interspecies Communication, York University, Summer 2019
• Synthesizing Fields: Art, Complexism and the Space Beyond Now'',for Technoetic Arts, Complexism: Art + Architecture + Biology + Computation, A New Axis in Critical Theory?, Intellect Press, Volume 14, Issue 1–2, 2016
• Art + the Brain: Stories + Structures catalogue for Art + the Brain: Stories and Structures Symposium, Co-Author and Co-Editor; essay: Phantom Bodies + Mutable Archives, Art I Sci Center, California Nanosystems Institute, UCLA, Los Angeles, California, Art I Sci Center, June 2016
• Fantastic Voyage and Other Scales of Wonder, for The Routledge Handbook to Biology in Art and Architecture, Routledge Press, 2015
• Evolving Third Culture Thinking in Art and Science, for Conversations Across Cultures: Perspectives in Art and Education, De Gruyter Press, 2015
• Minding the Gap: Risk Capital and the Myth of Two Cultures, Editorial for Leonardo, Vol. 45, No. 1, MIT Press, 2012