Ferdinanda Florence

VELPCo Large no. 3

2016

Ferdinanda Florence was born in Washington, DC and grew up in Arlington, Virginia. She received a degree in art history and studio art at The American University in 1994 and has continued to pursue a successful professional life as a scholar, teacher and practicing artist. She earned her Master’s degree in art history at the University of Maryland, College Park in 1998. A second-generation Armenian-America, Florence has explored in her research the role of place in artistic expression. Her Master’s thesis detailed the link between Armenian religious rituals and church architecture. In her travel to sites in France, Italy and Germany, she has researched the symbolism of doorway and floor decoration in Romanesque buildings. In her artwork, she uses industrial sites in her home city of Vallejo to explore issues of place on a more personal level. Her exhibitions reflect her varied interests and concerns. Her work has appeared at the Di Rosa Preserve, Napa (“All in the Family IV,” 2005); the University of San Francisco Law School (“Creative Justice: A Social Art Exhibit,” 2005); and as set decoration for a Bay Area Playwrights Festival performance at the Magic Theater, San Francisco (“As American As,” 2006). Her drawings were selected for exhibition at the FATE Biennial Conference at the Savannah College of Art and Design in 2013.