For immediate release: March 25, 2010

BLOOMSBURG — Pepon Osorio, an artist known for large-scale installations, will speak about his work at Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania Thursday, April 1, at 2:15 p.m. The lecture in Carver Hall’s Kenneth S. Gross Auditorium is free and open to the public.

Osorio’s pieces are influenced by his experience as a social worker in the Bronx and evolve from his interaction with neighborhoods and people.

“My principal commitment as an artist is to return art to the community,” he said.

A recent example is “Tina’s House,” a project created in collaboration with a family recovering from a fire. The house, a tabletop-size art piece, tells the story of the night of the fire and those affected. Osorio is traveling the country in a series of “home visits,” when he invites a new family to live with the artwork for at least one week, allowing the story of “Tina’s House” to continue.

Osorio’s work has been shown at the Whitney Museum of American Art and El Museo del Barrio in New York, the Smithsonian Museum of American Art in Washington, D.C., and el Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico and El Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico.

A resident of Philadelphia, Osorio was educated at the Universidad Inter-Americana in Puerto Rico and Herbert H. Lehman College in New York and received a master’s degree from Columbia University.

The lecture is sponsored by the art and art history department, College of Liberal Arts and Campus-Wide Committee on Human Relations.

For information, contact Jason Godeke, assistant professor of drawing and design, by e-mail or (570) 389-4187.

Bloomsburg University is one of 14 universities in the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education. The university serves approximately 9,000 students, offering comprehensive programs of study in the colleges of Education, Business, Liberal Arts and Science and Technology.