2015 Participating Artists: Dan Ivec & Nick G. Liadis

The final artists on our 2015 line-up have joined forces and talents. Read here about Dan Ivek and Nick Liadis' joint practice, as well as information on their individual careers below! 

An architect and instructor by profession (Liadis) and a published novelist and visual artist (Ivec),we come from unique arts backgrounds and share an interest in drawing, music, and a diversity of forms. Realizing a mutual interest in the fantastic and in the imagining of landscape, we began meeting and elaborating exquisite corpse drawings of buildings and cities. Our practice has expanded and now involves a horde of exercises with which we brainstorm architecture and then imagine the mental life and society of the occupants. For example, we improvise and narrate scenarios which the other artist must then sketch concurrently. 

Dan Ivek, Conceptual Sketch, 2015

Name: Dan Ivek

Hometown: Cleveland OH, and Chicago IL

Current Location/ Neighborhood: Bloomfield

Influential or Favorite Regional Artists: Hatch Arts Collective 

Artist Statement: 

I rely upon many mediums - writing, illustration, and voice - in an attempt to make and explain new worlds in which I can challenge myself and my own contemporary environment. I have promoted this vision via traditional writing and have also used images to support text or to inspire an improvised, oral telling of a fable.

Website: meeklingpress.com/onthestairs

Name: Nick G Liadis

Hometown: Pittsburgh, PA

Current Location/ Neighborhood: Lawrenceville

Influential or Favorite Regional Artist: Carlos Scarpa, Lebbeus Woods, Gordon Matta-Clark, Alfred Schnittke, Cornelis Cardew, Bernhard Leitner

Artist Statement:

Nick G Liadis is an Architectural Designer and Artist living in the Lawrenceville neighborhood of Pittsburgh, though also has strong connections to Detroit, MI. He has balanced practicing and teaching architecture with his own art making and consulting work. The time split between professional, academic, and studio environments has been quite illuminating. That successful combination affords tremendous perspective of the architecture discipline, continually prodding the relationship between architecture and art.

Much of Nick's work is made through a variety of media including architecture, space, and music. Drawing, design, and installation art extend that work as well. For Nick, having artistic skills in architecture challenges traditional modes of space making. This provides Nick with the questions and ideas that make architecture a multi-sensory experience through the presence of art. Some of Nick's most recent work involves music to highlight dimensions of space, applying aspects of notation, resonance, balance, noise, and echo.

Cross-disciplinary inquiry is the foundation to Nick's artistic skills. It is what constitutes the connections between, for example, music and architecture. Approaching architecture in this way means not just knowing about music, but being the musician as you do the architecture. That simple distinction allows for a more robust cross-disciplinary investigation, where each subject profoundly affects the other.  Nick is excited by moments where an idea can be both musical and architectural, crossing seemingly distinct art disciplines.

Through education, exceptional practice, and interdisciplinary art collaboration, Nick has worked in Pittsburgh at Desmone Architects, Springboard Design, Studio for Spatial Practice, Carnegie Mellon University, The Andy Warhol Museum, Mattress Factory Museum, Children's Museum of Pittsburgh, and Hatch Arts Collective. He is also a founding principal of Arscott + Liadis Collaborative LLC, a design and art making studio in the Polish Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh. He has his Master of Architecture degree from the University of Detroit Mercy.

Website: nickgliadis.com and arscottliadis.com