Adjunct Helena La Rota Lopez Awarded Thomas Wood Grant & Residency at Il Bisonte Printmaking Foundation

Adjunct Professor for the Department of Art & Design, Helena La Rota Lopez, a celebrated multidisciplinary artist, has been awarded the prestigious Thomas Wood Grant & Residency at the Il Bisonte Printmaking Foundation in Florence, Italy. This grant, endowed by the Wood family in memory of the late artist Thomas Wood, marks a triumphant return for La Rota Lopez to the historic studio where she first discovered her passion for printmaking over a decade ago.

Reflecting on this experience, La Rota López expressed her deep gratitude, saying, “I was overjoyed to return to Il Bisonte Foundation Studio in Florence, where I first discovered printmaking a decade ago. With the invaluable support from the studio faculty and staff, as well as the warm community of students, I was encouraged to experiment with new techniques and engage in dialogue with brilliant artists.”

During her residency, La Rota López revisited her Architectural Anatomy series, working on her latest project, “Bacatá dorada: laguna y catedral” (Golden Bacatá: Lake and Cathedral), which merges the circulatory system with the Primatial Cathedral of Bogotá and the sacred Lake Guatavita, a site tied to the legend of El Dorado.

La Rota López also noted the unique opportunity the residency provided her: “The Foundation granted me private access to draw silverpoint studies from the anatomical wax collection at La Specola Museum, which will be incredibly helpful for my studio practice.”

Her work is a tightrope walk between clinical and romantic, her studio a laboratory for expanding medium definitions in service of psychological experimentation. She fuses diverse expressive languages into an organic web of painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, and performative installation, which features her musical and choreographic compositions.
La Rota López added, “I am infinitely grateful to everyone at Il Bisonte and the Wood family for welcoming me and giving wings to my vision. I’m excited to keep printing and exploring new horizons.”

Not only was La Rota López a recipient of the Thomas Wood Grant & Residency, she has also held residencies at the ICAA Exhibiting Artist Grant, the Cuttyhunk Island Artist’s Residency, the Woodward Guest Residency, the Kraczyna Studio Printmaking Residency in Barga (IT), as well as scholarship and research awards from the academic institutions she attended, the Patricia & Scott Moger Grant and the McGuire Cravens Endowment.

Her work has been exhibited in the US and Italy, including group shows at the NADA Fair with Paradise Palace, the ICAA National Conference, the Collar Works Flat Files, the DFN Projects/Equity Gallery silverpoint show, the Parallels and Peripheries exhibition at the NYAA, the Susquehanna Art Museum, and the Colombian Consulate. She has been interviewed for STIRworld magazine and Paradice Palase, and was depicted in National Geographic, Artists’ Magazine, and Barganews.

Helena La Rota López is a multidisciplinary artist based in Ridgewood, NY. Born and raised in Bogotá, Colombia, she emigrated to study Liberal Arts at Sarah Lawrence College (BA 2016), then Painting and Anatomy at the New York Academy of Art (MFA 2019), and printmaking at the Art Students League (2020-22). Currently, she teaches at Montclair State University, NJ.
For more information about the residency please visit: www.ilbisonte.it/school/residencies/

For more information about Helena La Rota López, please visit her Instagram: www.instagram.com/hlarotalopez