URI art instructor Kim Salerno studied architecture at the University of Pennsylvania and painting at the School of Art Institute of Chicago. The Newport artist will further fuse her passion for art and design by turning her collages into an installation.

She was awarded a $15,000 Pollock-Krasner Foundation, Inc., grant last fall to help her do just that.

“Visual art is dominated by developments that alter the way people see. Computer design programs use layering systems to isolate visual elements,” said Salerno. “This fragmentary aspect of graphics is to contemporary art what perspective was to the Renaissance. I envision this 2-D infatuation in three dimensions, integrating graphic work with the deep space of Renaissance perspective and the physical experience of contemporary installations.”

Salerno’s collages are filled with domestic images—wallpaper patterns; architectural pieces such as door handles, stairs, lamps; and silhouetted figures. The artist often adds fabric, fake fur, fringe, or tulle.

She plans to develop her collages into an installation composed of large patterned panels and other objects suspended in space to create an environment in which the viewer can move through an interrupted, layered two-dimensional space sprinkled with some three-dimensional objects. She expects the completed work will appear to come alive not as a literal representation of a room, but as a dynamic space that alludes to and reflects the contemporary home environment.

The Pollock-Krasner Foundation, Inc., was established to provide financial assistance to individual visual artists through the generosity of the late Lee Krasner, a leading abstract expressionist painter and widow of Jackson Pollock. Grants are awarded internationally on the basis of recognizable artistic merit and financial need.