PRACTICE
Britt Ransom’s work explores human, animal, and environmental relationships through sculptures and installations created using digital fabrication processes. Using 3D scanning, 3D printing, laser cutting, and CNC Milling, her work questions our shared environment, climate change, and our relationships with other species. Translating data gathered from the environment, Ransom’s work travels through various levels of software mediation while often originating through the phones that we carrying our pockets. Regularly examining other species and landscapes in relation to ourselves, Ransom question humans’ analogous existence as the largest and most complex pest-network on the planet. Her work is systematic both in construction and in concept, often a direct reflection of observed microcosms found at our feet, in the web of a digital mesh, and born out of the braided entanglements between ourselves and the other species of plants and animals with whom we share our world.
Britt’s practice has recently shifted to include making work in response to the restoration and historical significance of the Tawawa Chimney Corner House (TCC), a national historic landmark for civil rights activism in Wilberforce, Ohio and former home of Ransom’s great-great grandparents.
BIO
Britt Ransom (b. Lima, Ohio, 1987) is an artist and educator based in Pittsburgh, PA. Ransom is a recent member of the New Museum’s New Inc Social Architecture cohort and a recipient of the Heinz Endowment Creative Development Award. She has participated in the Joan Mitchell Center Residency, Los Angeles Clean Tech Incubator (LACI) Residency, Santa Monica Camera Obscura Residency, Workshop Residence–San Francisco, The Arctic Circle Residency, and other residencies and visiting positions. Her work has also been recognized and supported through the Hopper Prize, Formlabs User Impact Award, and the College Art Association Professional Development Award.
Ransom’s work has been shown recently at New Museum’s New Inc DEMO 2024 (New York, NY), Louisiana State University (Baton Rouge, LA), Philips Exeter Academy & Louis Kahn Library (Exeter, NH), Co-Prosperity (Chicago, IL), Ohr-O’Keefe Museum of Art (Biloxi, MS), Antenna (New Orleans, LA), The Ogden Museum of Southern Art (New Orleans, LA), Contemporary Art Center New Orleans (New Orleans, LA), Pitzer College Art Gallery (Claremont, CA), Honor Fraser (Los Angeles, CA), Royale Projects (Los Angeles, CA), Torrance Art Museum (Torrance, CA), Schering Stiftung as part of Transmediale (Berlin, Germany), Missouri State University (Springfield, MO), Texas Woman’s University (Denton, TX), The University of Dallas (Irving, TX), and the Chicago Artists Coalition (Chicago, IL).
Her writing has been published in Antennae (2024), In and Out of View: Art and the Dynamics of Circulation, Suppression, and Censorship (2021), Leonardo Journal published by MIT Press (2019), The 3D Additivist Cookbook (2016), and The Routledge Handbook on Biology in Art, Architecture, and Design (Routledge Press, 2016).
In 2017, Ransom was the SIGGRAPH Studio Chair and in 2019 the SIGGRAPH Art Gallery Chair, roles within one of the largest annual computer graphics conferences in the United States. She was also supported by the U.S. Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs as a fellow through ZERO1’s fellowship teaching exchange in Pachuca, Mexico. She currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Emma S. & Reverdy C. Ransom Foundation and the Freedom to Grow Legacy Center (New Orleans, LA), and has previously served on the Board of Directors for New Media Caucus. Ransom is the great-granddaughter of civil rights activist Reverdy C. Ransom.
Britt Ransom is currently a tenured Associate Professor of Art at Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, PA), where she serves as area Chair of Sculpture, Installation, and Site Work. She has held previous academic appointments at California State University Long Beach (Long Beach, CA) and Southern Methodist University (Dallas, TX). Ransom has spent the last 15 years in full-time tenure-track faculty roles and in academic leadership and director positions She received her BFA in Art and Technology from The Ohio State University (2008) and her MFA in Electronic Visualization / New Media from the University of Illinois at Chicago (2011).
Academic CV Available upon Request