Tina Chisena

Teaches at The Art League

I have been making things of metal since 1972.  I studied jewelry making, enameling, blacksmithing, and sculpture at Penland, Arrowmont, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Touchstone Center for Crafts and TowsonUniversity where I completed my MFA in studio art with a concentration in Metalsmithing in December of 2002.

From 1971 until 2002 I worked full time as a bench scientist at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland.  I have taught enameling and metal related arts at Glen Echo Park for more than 20 years in addition to having been an adjunct instructor of Metalsmithing at Towson University and Montgomery College.
My view, my way of experiencing life, has been remarkably consistent throughout my life.  I have simply failed to give up on childhood and tried to experience things with the freshness and the inquisitiveness which have always been mine. As long as I can remember, my responses to things I see or experience in life are almost equally split between an intense excitement of the sensory experience and then a barrage of questions which leap into my mind involving "how," "what," "which," "why," etc.The images in my recent sculptural work derive from biological sources, usually microscopic, and often have reference to developmental biology.  Some of my recent work is concerned with homeobox genetics, conserved DNA sequences and ideas concerning evolutionary developmental biology.  Often I try to pull the viewer in toward the work for a closer look and to share in my amazement, my sensory appreciation of things and my intense curiosity about things.  These themes have also been important in my recent work in enamel and jewelry.
Some of my work appears in Bobby Hansson's book, The Fine Art of the Tin Can and Tim McCreight's book, Metalsmith's Book of Boxes and Lockets.