48 pages, 36 color images
11 3/4 x 8 7/8 in.
Paperback housed in trifold screen printed cover
ISBN 9781941556689

Published by Ampersand Editions, 2018
Deluxe edition of 25 signed and numbered copies

Designed in collaboration with Martha Lewis

Texts by Grace Kook-Anderson and Brian Libby

This signed deluxe edition of Coliseum includes your choice of an original drawing. Each work is pencil and pastel on paper and measures 11 1/2 x 8 3/4 inches. Make your choice(s) from the dropdown menu below.

Coliseum is a synthesis of three years of dedicated research and drawing focused on Veterans Memorial Coliseum, an iconic building located in Portland, Oregon that was designed by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill and completed in 1960. Just as the building has served as a framework for Bawa’s experimentation with pastel and pencil, her artist’s book is a platform for combining historic photos, archival blueprints and her own drawings in a way that feels at once academic and abstract, factual and fictional.

Avantika Bawa lives and works in Portland, Oregon. Originally from New Delhi, India, she received an MFA in painting from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1998. Bawa’s practice emphasizes the intersections where drawing and sculpture, stasis and motion and the functional and non-functional intermingle. Her work has been widely exhibited, including APEX: Coliseum currently at the Portland Art Museum (through February 10, 2019), curated by Grace Kook-Anderson. She is the recipient of several awards, notably the Oregon Arts Commission Joan Shipley Award, the Crow’s Shadow Institute of the Arts 2018 Golden Spot Residency Award and, most recently, the Hallie Ford Fellowship in the Visual Arts presented by the Ford Family Foundation. Her exhibition at Ampersand is supported in part by the Regional Arts & Cultural Council.