Philly-based Artist Panel
Arts&Eats Chestnut Hill w/ Philly-based Artists Panel — Fri August 7, 6pm (Free and open to the public!)
Join Prof. Lewis Colburn, Maddie Jones Rodriguez, and Dr. Nialah Wilson-Small for a panel discussing their works in our gallery. We’ll stay open late, along with other art galleries on the hill!
Lewis Colburn holds a BA in studio art and Russian language from St. Olaf College, and a MFA in sculpture from Syracuse University. Colburn has participated in numerous artist-in-residence programs including Franconia Sculpture Park, SculptureSpace, and RAIR in Philadelphia. Colburn’s work has been shown internationally and throughout the United States, at venues including the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, the Torrance Art Museum in Los Angeles, Locust Projects in Miami, and the Taoyuan Museum of Fine Arts in Taiwan. His works have been featured in Sculpture magazine, as well as the Philadelphia Inquirer. He teaches sculpture and 3D design at Drexel University, where he is an associate professor.
Maddie Jones Rodriguez is an artist living and working in Philadelphia, PA. She graduated with an MFA in Fiber and Material Studies from Tyler School of Art & Architecture in 2025 and BFA in Painting from Texas State University in San Marcos Texas in 2021. She is an Adjunct Professor at Rowan College of Burlington County and a practicing member of the artist collective and gallery Grizzly Grizzly. Her work has been exhibited at Abington Art Center, Big Ramp, Practice Gallery, Icebox Project space among other galleries. Currently Rodriguez is an inaugural fellow at the Center for Art and Creative Exchange.
Nialah Wilson-Small is a Forbes 30 Under 30 recognized robotics researcher, educator, and consultant. Her work is at the cross section of design, human-robot interaction, and multi-robot systems and has been published in top academic venues. Specifically, she is interested in how drones can use tactile feedback to influence human motion, considering both individual and group interactions, drawing inspiration from the arts. She holds a PhD and MS in Aerospace Engineering from Cornell University and a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Howard University. A former New York University professor and Artist-in-Resident with Smashworks Dance in NYC, Dr. Wilson-Small is now an Artist-in-Residence with the Robotics, Automation, and Dance (RAD) Lab and a robotic software engineer at Asylon Robotics.
Amy LaViers works at the intersection of robotics and dance and is a pioneer in the field she named: choreobotics. Her writing, choreography, and machine designs have been presented internationally in both engineering and arts venues, including Nature, Robotics and Autonomous Systems, the Oxford Handbook of Improvisation in Dance, MIT Press, Merce Cunningham’s studios, Joe’s Pub at the Public Theater, and the Performance Arcade. Her teaching has been recognized on the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent by Their Students with Outstanding distinction, and she is a recipient of DARPA’s Young Faculty Award and Director’s Fellowship. Her work has been featured in media outlets like The New York Times, Wired, and Dance Magazine. She lives in Philadelphia where she directs the Robotics, Automation, and Dance (RAD) Lab, a non-profit for artmaking, education, and research.