2003-04 Activities

Community-Based Artist: Anna Callahan

Community-based artist Anna Callahan has been working with EOTU this year to create visual maps of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The maps draw from and provide visual environments for EOTU student research. Anna’s work is an extraordinary gateway to student life and research at UIUC. Click here to see it.

Anna is committed to the visual mapping of narrative. Recently she collaborated with the Champaign-Urbana Mass Transit District in her project On the Bus, which consisted of signs in area buses as well as an audio/visual kiosk in the Transit building and materials for distribution (postcards and bookmarks). In that project she audio-visually mapped interviews with riders about their routes and futures.

In another recent project, The Danville Encyclopedia, the Danville Commercial-News and the Danville Public Library funded Anna to produce an audio-visual encyclopedia of local knowledge in Danville. For this project she interviewed people of all ages and walks of life. They helped her produce a catalogue of local knowledge, categorized under such headings as "Alzheimer’s mother, taking care of" and "Paper air planes, making." Excerpts from The Danville Encyclopedia were featured in the February 2004 issue of Harper's Magazine and the project was subsequently featured in the Chicago Tribune.

Browse Anna's online portfolio at www.anna-callahan.com.