Erin Anfinson is an Associate Professor of Art and Design, serves as the department's Foundations Coordinator and teaches courses in Drawing I and Foundations of Digital Art and Design.

Erin.Anfinson@mtsu.edu 

www.erinanfinson.com

Erin Anfinson is an Associate Professor of Art at Middle Tennessee State University where she teaches drawing, design, and digital art courses in the Foundations program. Her encaustic-infused paper works and animated films are often inspired by an interest in science, conservation, natural history, and narratives of ecosystems in flux. She has been a National Park Service artist-in-residence twice, first in 2017 at Herbert Hoover National Historic Site in West Branch, Iowa and again in 2018-19 at Stones River National Battlefield in Murfreesboro, TN. Both residencies profoundly impacted her studio practice, resulting in the creation of works that reflect on the discovery, awareness and loss of diminishing native ecosystems.
 
Anfinson has exhibited her work nationally and internationally in galleries, museums, and film festivals, including the Gadsden Museum of Art (Gadsden, AL), The Frist Museum (Nashville, TN), and the Krakow International Green Film Festival (Krakow, Poland). She is been a recipient of several awards and grants from organizations including the International Encaustic Artist organization and the Tennessee Arts Commission. In addition to her creative work and research, she also regularly teaches mixed media encaustic workshops at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. 

About Anfinson's Animations

About ten years ago I revisited my childhood fascination with animation and it has since grown to occupy a significant part of my studio practice. My early experimentation with playful cut paper stop-motion sequences eventually evolved into the creation of short films. My most recent project was informed by a 2017 artist residency at Herbert Hoover National Historic Site in West Branch, Iowa where I learned about the diminished native tallgrass prairie ecosystem. Animation provided a platform to tell a deeper visual story about this environment and communicate the experience of moving through the space with sight, sound and motion.

 

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 Encaustics