Alan Powell is an internationally exhibiting electronic media artist working in video, photography, performance, and multichannel installation. His 50-year career has been grounded in collaboration, community engagement, and embracing technological evolution in his artistic practice. He holds an MFA from Mason Gross School of the Arts and a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. In the 1970s, Alan co-founded Electron Movers, the video artist collective and Providence, RI’s first Media Arts Center. Electron Movers were vanguards in proving the capacity of video as an art form while staying deeply connected to Providence with immersive performances and community-oriented creative models.
Over five decades, Alan’s work has shown at The Kitchen, Hallswalls, CEPA, and The Museum of the Moving Image in New York; the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia; The Long Beach Museum in California and the Musee d’Arte Moderne in Paris. Videotapes from Alan’s thirty-year collaboration with Connie Coleman, his late partner, have been broadcast on PBS and are archived at Cornell University Library and Electronic Arts Intermix in NYC.
During their partnership, Alan and Coleman delved into experimental documentary, sculptural installation, as well as a return to their artistic backgrounds of traditional printmaking and fine arts to investigate mass media and explore culture and language systems.
Following Coleman’s death, Alan relocated his studio to the Catskills. His daily practice brings into alignment all the mediums he has worked across in his career; he regularly incorporates painting, video and electronic imaging in installations and continues to observe the fragile balance between human presence and the natural world.
An emeritus professor of communications at Arcadia University, Alan serves on the board of Philadelphia-based collective Termite TV and Signal Culture in Owego, NY.