Dinner and Discussion: Diana Shpungin & Paul Amenta

Franconia’s longstanding “Dinner & Discussion” lecture series invites the community to engage with visiting artists in a fun and informal setting. Please join us from the comfort of your own home for Diana and Paul's lecture, "Drawing from Site and Memory" and send your questions for them through Facebook Live!

Artists Diana Shpungin and Paul Amenta have had a twenty year friendship where they first met in graduate school at the School of Visual Arts in NYC in 2000. In 2015 they collaborated on Shpungin's monumental work Drawing Of A House (Triptych) through the nomadic organization SiTE:LAB which Amenta co-founded. For the first time they will be collaborating as co-artists on a new commissioned site-specific sculptural work for Franconia Sculpture Park.

Diana Shpungin is a Brooklyn based multi-disciplinary artist whose artistic practice is dedicated to challenging ideas of drawing through sculptural and time based forms. She has been exhibited extensively in solo and group exhibitions in both national and international venues including: The Bronx Museum of Art, Bronx, NY; Sculpture Center, Long Island City, NY; Museum of Contemporary Art, Tucson, AZ; Bass Museum of Art, Miami, FL; Locust Projects, Miami, FL; Futura Center for Contemporary Art, Prague, Czech Republic; Tomio Koyama Gallery, Tokyo, Japan; Invisible Exports, New York, NY; Marc Straus Gallery, New York, NY; MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA; Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY; SiTE:LAB, Grand Rapids, MI; and The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT. Her work will be the subject of a solo exhibition Always Begin At The End at Smack Melon, Brooklyn, NY in 2022. Shpungin was awarded the 2019/20 Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant and the 2017 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Sculpture. And has also been the recipient of awards, fellowships and residencies from The Foundation of Contemporary Art, The MacDowell Colony, and Art Omi. Shpungin’s work has been reviewed in publications such as Artforum, Flash Art, New York Magazine, Art in America, Sculpture Magazine, The New York Times, Timeout New York, Timeout London, and The Brooklyn Rail among others. Born in Latvia’s seaside capital of Riga under Soviet rule, Shpungin immigrated as a child to the U.S. where her family settled in New York City. She received her MFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York, NY and is currently an Assistant Professor at Parsons: The New School for Design in New York City. -- More info: dianashpungin.com

Paul Amenta is a visual artist working across disciplines including site-specific installation, architectural intervention, film and video, and large-scale collaborative public projects. Amenta has received national attention for his use of vacant urban spaces for temporary site-specific art installations and projects. Amenta is one of the co-founders of SiTE:LAB, where his involvement as an organizer extends well beyond the selection and display of artwork—he has extensive experience designing, adapting and modifying structures as compelling spaces in which to install and view artwork. Amenta has exhibited at Mass MoCA, North Adams, MA; Brooklyn Academy of Music, Brooklyn, NY; Open Source Gallery, Brooklyn; Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts, Grand Rapids, MI; Marvelli Gallery, New York, NY; and created special projects for UNTITLED Art Fair, San Francisco, CA; and UNTITLED Art Fair, Miami Beach, FL. He has been awarded grants from National Endowment for the Arts and Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs. His individual work as well as SiTE:LAB projects have been written about in publications such as The New York Times, Artnet, Detroit Free Press, ArtNews, Sculpture Magazine, Hyperallergic, Art in America, and Artforum. Amenta holds an MFA in Fine Arts from The School of Visual Arts, NY and a BFA in Sculpture and Printmaking from Grand Valley State University. -- More info: paulamenta.com