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Lisa Bulawsky



Lisa Bulawsky is a visual artist widely recognized for her works on paper, installation, and temporary public projects. She has enjoyed an active studio practice and career since the 1990s and is known for her creative research exploring personal and collective histories through the intrinsic properties of print media. Bulawsky’s works have been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions in the U.S. and internationally, including the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco (as part of the Fifty Fifty Arts Collective); the Eleanor D. Wilson Museum in Roanoke, Virginia; the Dalarnas Museum in Sweden; and the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.; among many others. Books featuring her work include “Printmaking at the Edge” (2006), “Printmaking: A Complete Guide to Materials and Processes” (2009), and “American Print Makers” (2014). She has received numerous grants and awards including an individual M-AAA NEA Fellowship for painting and works on paper, the Marvin Bileck Artist-in-Residence award at Bowdoin College, and the Francis Niederer Artist-in-Residence award at Hollins University. Her prints are in many collections including the Spencer Museum of Art, the Nelson-Atkins Museum, and the Royal Academy of Art in Antwerp, Belgium. Bulawsky earned her Bachelor of Arts in studio art from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and her Master of Fine Arts with honors from the University of Kansas. She has taught at Washington University in St. Louis since 1996, and received an Emerson Teaching Award in 2005 and a Founder’s Day Award for distinguished faculty in 2013, among other academic honors. She is the chair of the MFA in Visual Art program and the director of Island Press.


Select Exhibitions and Presentations

  • “there are millions of suns left,” Bruno David Gallery, St. Louis, MO, 2023.
  • “3rd Coast Biennial, K Space Contemporary Gallery,” Corpus Christi, TX, 2022.
  • “Portable Memories in Rising Seas,” Fifty-Fifty art collective – Lisa Bulawsky and Laurencia Strauss, The Studios of Key West Gallery, Key West, FL, 2018.

Select Awards and Grants

  • 2022 — Washington University Transdisciplinary Incubator, for “Moving Stories,” with Ila Sheren, Tabea Linhard, Ariela Schecter, and Jonathan Hanahan
  • 2018 — Creative Activity Research Grant, Sam Fox School, Washington University, for Portable Memories in Rising Seas with Fifty-Fifty art collective

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