Brian Collier Professor of Fine Arts: Art & Design
Bio
B.F.A. Suny at Buffalo
M.F.A., University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Areas of Expertise:
Sculpture/3D/Site-Specific Art, Digital Imaging, Fine Woodworking and Furniture Design, Ecological Art, Digital Video and Interdisciplinary Art. I am particularly interested in research-based artworks that traverse traditional disciplinary boundaries while retaining a strong connection to foundational fine art production.
Courses I Teach:
Digital Imaging
Sculpture: Subject and Object
Sculpture: Site and Installation
Art & Ecology
Wood Furniture Design and Construction
Junior Studio
Senior Studio
Professional Practices in Art & Design
My Saint Michael’s:
As an interdisciplinary artist with a background in sculpture, furniture design and fine woodworking I am committed to teaching our students how to develop strong technical skills, be highly experimental and explore the many ways visual art intersects with other disciplines. Objects, images and designs produced by artists are found everywhere, not just in galleries and museums. Artists have a unique perspective into the complex visual and spatial environments we live and work in because we don’t just analyze them, we produce them. Teaching students at a Liberal Arts College provides amazing opportunities to further the understanding of how art and design intersect with, and contribute to, culture and society. I am also able to connect our students to professional artists in my role as Director and Curator of the McCarthy Art Gallery.
Collier Artist Website: https://briandcollier.net
Bio
Brian D Collier’s interdisciplinary, research-based projects manifest as sanctioned and unsanctioned site-specific works, exhibitions and presentations. He uses photography, video, sculpture, drawing, artist’s books, installation and performance to examine plants and animals coexisting with us in human-dominated environments.
Collier’s work has been in solo and group exhibitions in the U.S. and abroad. Venues include Neues Museum Weserberg Bremen, Germany; Palazzo Galli, Fontecchio, Italy; Centro de Desarrollo de las Artes Visuales, Havana, Cuba; Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art; Rowland Contemporary, Chicago; Contemporary Art Center, North Adams, MA; CEPA Gallery, Buffalo, NY; Galería Raúl Martínez, Havana, Cuba; 60 Wall Gallery, NYC; Power Plant Gallery, Duke University; Idaho State University; Shelburne Museum; Burlington City Arts, VT; and Fleming Museum.
Collier’s work has been written about in Art in America, The New York Times, Afterimage, Art Papers Magazine, Domus, Art New England; The Chicago Reader, Orion: Nature/ Culture/ Place, and The Burlington Free Press. His work is included in the books:
Awards & Recognition
Vermont Arts Council Creation Grant, 2025
Artist in Residence for the month of October in Fontecchio, Italy as part of ARCA – Art. Regenerations. Community. Living. An international arts residency program. There are a number of partner organizations including MAXXI L’Aquila, The National Museum of L’Aquila, The University of L’Aquila. I was sponsored for the residency by The Current: A Space for Contemporary Art.
Solo Exhibition of “Our Personal Nature” at Palazzo Galli in Fontecchio, Abruzzo, Italy
Solo Exhibition of “Unlawning America: Past and Future” at Idaho State University
Writing about my project, “Roadkill Shrines” was included in the book The Urban Naturalist: How to Make the City Your Scientific Playground from MIT Press, April 2025
Exhibition of “The Traveling Museum of Very Small Objects” at the Fleming Museum of Art, Burlington, VT
Exhibition of “Unlawning America” at BCA Center, Burlington, VT
My work included in the book “Art & Ecology Now” by Andrew Brown, Thames and Hudson Press
My work included in the book “The Object” by MIT Press
Artist Profile in Art New England
Visiting Artist at Vermont Studio Center
Exhibition and Programming Committee Member, Burlington City Arts
Interview
For over 25 years I have been creating interdisciplinary projects that investigate the influence of humans on other species and our impact on the places we live. I am most interested in the contrast between our culturally generated understanding of the natural world and actual everyday experiences with plants and other-than-human animals. I make work to provide opportunities for people to have a deeper level of engagement with these other species. Art can increase awareness of the innumerable ways we influence and interact with them. My goal is to reframe what we conventionally call “nature” and remove artificial separations between humans and the other species we live with.
Recent News
Brian Collier of the Saint Michael’s College fine arts/art & graphic design faculty is an active and widely acclaimed interdisciplinary artist who has been exhibiting his own work around Vermont in recent months. For example, this past August 20 in Stowe, a reception launched an exhibition in which Brian is showing new sculptures. The venue is “The Current: A Center for Contemporary Art” and the title of the exhibition is “Exposed 2022.” Also recently, for a Shelburne Museum project, Brian produced video work in collaboration with his twin sons, Alex and Max, exploring the museum from their perspective. In September, Brian along with other Saint Michael’s faculty artists Mallory Breiner, Jordan Douglas, Peter Gallo, Gordon Glover, Becca Gurney, and Will Mentor all had pieces on display for viewing at a gallery reception to launch a Faculty Exhibition in the McCarthy Art Gallery, from interactive art to more traditional oil paintings. Brian also ran a seed ball making workshop in Hinesburg in October.
(posted February 2023)
Brian Collier, associate professor of art & design and curator/director of the McCarthy Art Gallery, is having another busy year. He will be exhibiting new sculptures in the outdoor sculpture exhibition for The Current: A Center for Contemporary Art in Stowe, VT in August ‘22. Brian installed a Lawn to Pollinator Habitat demo site at Geprags Community Park in Hinesburg, VT, in collaboration with his Vermont Master Naturalist colleagues. He designed the interpretive sign for the site and made a website for it as well. He was a panelist on a College Art Association panel titled, “Ecoart Strategies for Place-based Pedagogical Practices” in March ‘22. Also, he is exhibiting new video work done in collaboration with his twin sons Maximilian and Alexander using footage shot by them and selected and edited by Brian for “Eyesight & Insight: Lens on American Art.” The exhibition will be on view at The Pizzagalli Center for Art & Education at Shelburne Museum from May 15, 2022 – Oct. 16, 2022.
https://shelburnemuseum.org/exhibition/eyesight-insight/
And finally, he is co-curating a Fall ‘22 exhibition of new work by Michelle Brody in the McCarthy Art Gallery with Patricia Lee Watts from Ecoartspace.
(posted July 2022)
Brian D. Collier, associate professor of art & design, is a contributing author for the pedagogy book, Ecoart in Action: Activities, Case Studies and Provocations for Classrooms and Communities. (New Village Press, an imprint of NYU Press). Brian curated two visiting artist exhibitions, designed all publicity materials and hosted public artist lectures for the McCarthy Art Gallery in Fall ’21: -Daniel Rivera & Jenny Johnson, “Migrating Landscapes” ; and -Julia Hechtman & Melissa Pokorny, “Kindred.” He also initiated a pollinator meadow demo site with his Vermont Master Naturalist colleagues at Geprags Park in Hinesburg, VT. The site will be fully launched in Spring ’22 with interpretive signage designed by Brian. In addition, he will be a panelist for “Ecoart Pedagogies: Transforming Education for Classrooms and Communities” at the 2022 College Art Association Conference. Brian also did a radio interview with Ric Cengeri on his Vermont Viewpoint show on station WDEV out of Waterbury in late August. To talk about his Unlawning America project, the artist’s wide-reaching initiative through his art in recent years to encourage Americans to stop mowing their lawns, for a host of compelling environmental and aesthetic reasons. A national trade journal called Private University Products and News prominently featured Brian and his art in an issue earlier this year. And starting in December, Brian was in an online exhibition hosted by the Shelburne Museum called “Spectacles at Shelburne Museum.” The work is of new videos shot in collaboration with his children, Max and Alex Collier, then selected and edited by Brian.
(posted February 2022)
Brian Collier of the Saint Michael’s fine arts/art & graphic design faculty recently was featured in the cover story of a national trade magazine called Private University Products and News (the June 2021 edition). Here’s the opening of the long feature story with photos, titled “Ecology, Art, and Environment at Saint Michael’s College, by writer Cynthia Mwenja: “Brian Collier, Associate Professor of Fine Arts in Art and Design, as well as Curator and Director of the McCarthy Art Gallery at Saint Michael’s College, devotes himself to a dizzying and inspiring array of impressive personal and professional projects (many of which are viewable at briandcoller.net). All of Collier’s work centers on issues of ecology and the environment, along with close examination of human interventions that either suppress or support the natural world.” The magazine even featured a shot of the beautiful Saint Michael’s campus on the cover.
(posted July 2021)
Brian Collier, associate professor of art & design, did a live interview on June 12, 2020 about his “unlawning” project for the Center for Research on Vermont, which was recorded and was viewable online. Brian’s in the past year included in an online exhibition, “ExtraNatural – Outside the Operation of Natural Laws” curated by Ginger Gregg Duggan and Judy Hoos Fox, with content available online through August 31, 2020 on the website Virtual Views. Brian also was Featured Artist at ecoartspace recently. Ecoartspace has served as a platform for artists addressing environmental issues since 1999 and the creators have curated over 60 art and ecology exhibitions as well as organizing and participating in ecoart programs and events.
(posted February 2021)