Frank Pietronigro
Frank Pietronigro, member of the Council of Advisors for the Taksha Institute of Space Arts (TISA), is an interdisciplinary artist, educator and author. He is the first American artist to create “drift paintings” where his body floated within a three-dimensional painting that he created in zero gravity aboard NASA’s KC135 turbojet. He is Co-Founder and Project Director of the international arts organization Zero Gravity Arts Consortium (ZGAC), which oversees the Space Artist Education Program and advocates for greater artist access to space technology.
He has also taught digital production and design at the Web Design New Media School at the Academy of Art University at the graduate and undergraduate level for the past thirteen years. He is West Coast Representative of the STUDIO For Creative Inquiry, College of Fine Arts, Carnegie Mellon University and served the space art community as one of the coordinators for Yuri’s Night Bay Area 2007/08 held at NASA Ames Research Center. Frank Pietronigro has served San Francisco’s LGBTQ and arts communities for over thirty years having produced Art in the Park, Intergeneration: Building Queer Community Across the Ages Through the Arts and Directing the San Francisco Arts Commission Arts Festival. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Interdisciplinary Arts from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1996.
His work has been featured in the Sunday New York Times Arts and Leisure, Fortune Magazine, CNN/Money, Hot Wired and Leonardo Magazine, an Massachusetts Institute of Technology publication of the International Society of Arts, Science and Technology. Pietronigro’s work has been presented with museums and institutions including: the Tate In Space, Tate Museum, London; the Maison Europeenne de la Photographie, Paris; Smart Project Space, Amsterdam; Museum Fur Gestaltung, Zurich; Galeria Ze Dos Bois, Lisbon; Castle Gallery, College of New Rochelle, NY; Southern Exposure Gallery, San Francisco; Blohard Gallery at Vox Populi, Philadelphia; the Mill Valley Film Festival and the Atlanta Contemporary Arts Center.