bruce scherting
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art portfolio
I am a co-developer of issue-based art installations exploring
connections between art, science and the humanities that often
includes other partners and encourages visitor participation in
authoring exhibition messages.

As a principal investigator, I contribute to the brainstorming process, concept development, research, writing proposals and interpretative labels, graphic design and marketing materials, project management, budgets, materials research,fabrication, space planning, and the production and installation of the work. 

Multimedia installation artist exploring
issue-based, 
interdisciplinary connections between art, science, nature and medicine. 


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Washed Up
2019, Oklahoma State University Museum of Art, Stillwater, OK


The first of a three-part exhibition series about the impact of water events—regionally and globally—on geographies, cultures, and economies, this installation explores the environmental challenges of water insecurity and climate change to human life and biodiversity through the lens of art.

Installation views
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Memory of Water:
​constructing a sense of place in the Hydrosphere

2018-17, Albrecht Kemper Art Museum, Saint Joseph, Missouri


An interdisciplinary/intermedia exploration of water issues and interior waterways broadly, with content that draws upon pop cultural, scientific and literary references and merges these
with sound, movement, image and sculptural objects.The result is an assemblage of discursive and immersive, lyrical and interpretive perspectives on water. The artists encourage serious consideration and thoughtful involvement with the work presenting complex topics with a sense of beauty, theatricality, humor, and a reserved optimism.

Installation views

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Flowers for the Waiting Room
Flores para la Sala de Espera
Examined Life Conference, University of Iowa, Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine

October 5-9, 2016

Working with staff and medical students, this project was implemented at the public hospital in San Lorenzo Paraguay. Patients and their families created artworks with text reflecting upon their hopes and experiences with the healthcare system that were displayed in the main corridor of the Museo del Hospital de Clinicas, Asunción, Paraguay. A "sampler" display of this project was on view in the conference lobby area as part of an Examined Life presentation on the larger project. The conference focuses on the links between medicine, the humanities and the arts. ​
 
Installation views

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Flowers for Paraguay
2016,
Hospital Clinicas San Lorenzo and Museo de Hospital y Clinicas in Asunción, Paraguay

Flowers for the Waiting Room is a collaborative project currently extending across three continents, based in the U.S. Midwest with partners in Paraguay and China. The project explores narratives around the themes of healthcare access and lived experiences with illness through the perspectives of patients, their families and friends, healthcare providers and the general public. The goal of the project is to give voice to the concerns of these individuals, and to collect, share and compare attitudes around healthcare through various personal and societal lenses.

​Images soon.

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Sick Art and Exquisite Bodies
Examined Life Conference, University of Iowa, Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine

April 16-18, 2015

A selection of personal Milagros created by workshop participants in association with a series of Waiting Room: Lost and Found  exhibitions were on display in the conference lobby space as part of a presention on waiting room project. The conference focuses on the links between medicine, the humanities and the arts.

Workshop Milagros from: Salina, Kansas, Topeka, Kansas, Saint Joseph, Missouri, Deland, Florida, and Saint Paul, Minnesota.

Installation views

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Drift & DRAG: reflections on water
2015, Mulvane Museum of Art, Washburn University,
Topeka, Kansas


Kansas, a land of ebb and flow. Marked by extremes in variability of water levels, Kansas is characterized by the polarities of flood and drought. Drift & Drag is a survey of science and art-based research projects incorporating sound, image and object by individuals who are from, working in, or collaborating with Kansan artists or communities to explore a variety of issues pertaining to water.

Installation views

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con/Current(s)
2014, Terschelling, the Netherlands


An arts-based research project exploring water issues focusing on the oyster reefs of Long Island Sound, a man-made peninsula on the tidal plains of San Francisco Bay, and the ebb and flow of ancient seas and contemporary waterways in the Midwest.

Installation views



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Gray Matters
2014, Glore Psychiatric Museum, Saint Joseph, Missouri


Gray Matters is one of a series of tableaux installations that combines sculpture, image and sound, and invites public messaging in the exhibition space. Booklets compiled from visitor participation at previous installations, along with additional artworks and writings, expand on the subject of mental health by offering literary, historical and contemporary context in relation to the artworks and objects on display.

​Installation views


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The Geography of Waiting
2013,
University of Groningen, The Netherlands

With content collected from individuals internationally, the installation presents personal narratives, archetypal objects, and photographs of places shared, recorded,interpreted, cataloged, and composed. The resulting images, video, sound, text, sculpture, and social media contributions culminate here in a waiting-room-like space.

Project website

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The Waiting Room: lost and found
2014, Hand Art Center, Stetson University, DeLand, Florida
2012, Sabatini Gallery, Topeka and Shawnee County Public
          Library, Topeka Kansas
2010, Catherine G. Murphy Gallery, St. Catherine University, 
          St. Paul, Minnesota


The Waiting Room is a multimedia participatory installation that examines women's health and healthcare through aesthetic, scientific, cultural, political, economic and literary lenses.

Project website

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Simulated Garden
2013,
Fisch Haus Gallery, Wichita, Kansas

An installation reflecting upon nature and humanity that provides whimsical and eerie entries into fantastical worlds of science and medicine.

Installation views

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DropIN PopUP Waiting Room
2013-2012, University of Kansas Spencer Museum of Art, Lawrence, Kansas

Healthcare delivery and access is one of today’s most pressing societal issues. The installation explores this complex topic through the psychologically rich context of the waiting room: the place—often anxious, frustrating, and isolating—where people wait to interface with the medical system.

Project website
Press

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Floating World: a tent city campground for displaced
human and bird song

2011-2010, San Jose, California

A temporary public art installation commissioned by the City of San Jose´ Public Art Program in collaboration with the ZERO1 International Biennial. Twenty-one miniature flood disaster relief tents, spanning 190 feet, were cantilevered off a bridge that spans the Guadalupe River.

Description
Installation views
Process views


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Collect(ive): The Grinnell People's Museum (GPM) Culturing Community: Projects about Place
2010, Grinnell, Iowa

Over a six month period, we mined a variety of collections at Grinnell College and scanned personal objects to engage the community in place-based creative art making to give visual form to local personal narratives and interests. The result of this process was embedded in three locations:the
Faulconer Gallery, the Drake Community Library and the Joe Rosenfield '25 Center.

Installation views

GPM field guide

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Niche: nature morte and the simulated garden
2009-2008, University of Kansas, The Commons,
Lawrence, Kansas

Where biology meets the consumer ecosystem.

The word niche is from the old French for nest. In contemporary usage, it can refer to the place an organism occupies in an ecosystem, or the place a product holds in what marketing professionals sometimes call the consumer ecosystem. The exhibition Niche encompasses both associations.

The imagery is a hybrid of consumer culture and the natural world. Images evoking the tree of life as a symbolic construct and as an illustration of natural selection pervade the installation. The result is suggestive of a strange fairy tale in which the beautiful and peculiar occupy the same space.

Installation views

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Prairie Earth: an installation exploring the native Kansas
landscape and urban sprawl

2008-2006, Wichita Art Museum, Wichita, Kansas

As both prairie and farm succumb to grass lawns and asphalt, a dialogue about our relationship to nature and the land is urgent. This project challenges the viewer to think about these issues by contrasting the rich ecology of the prairie with representation of the repetitive environment offered by poorly planned development.

Description
Installation views

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Wonderland Recast: from wilderness to garden to mall
2006, St. Catherine University, St. Paul, Minnesota

Wonderland explores cultural perception of nature and juxtaposes the native ecology of the central Midwest with the artificially constructed garden environment of shopping malls and suburban development to call attention to the impact of urban sprawl on native species.

Description
Installation views

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Diagnostik
2001-2000, University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics,
Medical Museum, Iowa City, Iowa

This installation provokes contemplation and dialogue concerning preconceptions about the mentally ill and the integrity of the individual patient. Stimulated by photographs, documents and objects from the collections of the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics Medical Museum, the exhibition represents an aesthetic and critical response to the history of mental health care.

Description
Installation views

Diagnostik on-line exhibit
University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, Medical Museum
bruce.scherting@gmail.com