ARTbreak: Colleen Woolpert – Double Take

Recipient of the Kalamazoo Book Arts Award in the 2022 West Michigan Area Show, interdisciplinary artist Colleen Woolpert invites the audience to do a double-take in her upcoming presentation. As an identical twin born on Halloween, she will share projects related to her uncanny life of “directed serendipity,” her practice of using wonder as a social activist tool, her fascination with vision (due to her twin’s lack of depth perception), and their recent collaboration at the Prairie Ronde Artist Residency in Vicksburg, MI.

Woolpert’s wide-ranging practice encompasses still and motion pictures, installations, interactive objects, and public programs. She has worked with blind artists in Seattle and Syracuse, and local audiences may be familiar with her recent In-Depth Kalamazoo exhibitions featuring late 19th-century stereographs (3D photos). Inventor and maker of the TwinScope Viewer, Woolpert’s stereoscope has led to her working with numerous institutions, including the Smithsonian Archives of American Art and the Museum of Modern Art, and to her pursuing a patent as an art project.