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Gail Wight is an American new media artist working with sculpture, video, interactive media, installations and text. Her work focuses on the fusion of art with biology, neurology, and technology.

Early life and education
Gail Wight was born in Sunny Valley, Connecticut in 1960. In 1988 she received her BFA in Studio for Interrelated Media from the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston, and in 1994 she received an MFA in New Genres from the San Francisco Art Institute.

Career
Wight began as a research assistant in 1988 at the Design Lab of the Massachusetts Institute of of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and started her teaching career as an assistant professor, director and co-founder of Intermedia Arts in 2003 at Mills College in Oakland, California. She started her professorship at Stanford University as an assistant professor of the department of Art and Art History and became the associate professor of the department, where she teaches at the university as a new and experimental media art professor. Regarding her artistic career, she has taken part in various solo exhibitions at the Beall Center for Art & Technology, Irvine, California, the Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, the San Francisco Center for the Book, etc. and also numerous group exhibitions across the world including the Bienal Internacional de Arte Contemporaneo de Sevilla, Seville, Spain, Natural History Museum London, England, the Physics Room Christ Church, New Zealand, etc. Her work involving the specific melding of art and science explores how perceptions of life and humanity are sometimes misconstrued. Her work also alludes to the inaccuracy of only relying on science to explain the whys of life through humorous critique. Wight's concentration of scientific and technological elements in her artwork stemmed from an interest in a family member's illness. The illness was never talked about, and thus, the seed of curiosity was planted. Learning all that she could about contemporary biology branched out into her art and has created notable new media.

Notable works
Hydraphilia (2009) is a video installation of the microscopic growth patterns of physarum polycephalum, also known as slime mold. Wight was inspired by slime mold because of the organism's natural beauty emulated in its pattern shifts as it reproduces and develops. She created Hydraphilia by videotaping the growth patterns of the slime mold on agar slides, prepared with non-toxic dyes.

Exhibitions

 * 2013 “All the Time in the World” Clay Center for Art & Science, Charleston, WV (with Mary Tsiongas)
 * “All the Time in the World” McColl Center for Visual Art, Charlotte, NC (with Mary Tsiongas)
 * 2012 “Ground Plane” Patricia Sweetow Gallery, San Francisco, CA
 * 2011 “Under the Influence” Patricia Sweetow Gallery, San Francisco, CA
 * 2010 “Restless Dust, a ghost-walk with Darwin” San Francisco Center for the Book San Francisco, CA
 * 2009 “Intertidal Zone” Patricia Sweetow Gallery San Francisco, CA
 * “Night Moves : Gail Wight” San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art San Jose, CA
 * “Hydraphilia” Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, NV
 * 2007 “The Evolution of Disarticulation” University of New Mexico Art Museum Albuquerque, NM
 * “The Anatomies” Ontario Science Museum Toronto, Ontario
 * 2006 “Sliding Scale” Thomas Whelton Gallery Stanford University, Stanford, CA
 * 2006 “Unhomely: Phantom Scenes in Global Society” Bienal Internacional de Arte Contemporaneo de Sevilla, Seville, Spain (in collaboration with Retort)
 * 2004 “Rodentia Chamber Music” in conjunction with “Wonderful” Cornerhouse Manchester, England
 * “when the cats are away...” Pozen Theater Mass. College of ART, Boston, MA
 * 2003 “The Evolution of Disarticulation” Walter & McBean Galleries San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, CA
 * “Supertramp (La traviata)” Headlands Center for the Arts Sausalito, CA (with Dr. Lucia Jacobs)
 * 1995 “Hereditary Allegories: A Study in Genetics” Capp Street Project San Francisco, CA
 * “Carbon Nation” International Gallery of Contemporary Art Anchorage, AK
 * “Neural Primers & other stories” The Archives San Francisco, CA
 * 1993 “Floraphobia” Habitat Institute Belmont, MA
 * “Diana Rudsten & Gail Wight” Diego Rivera Gallery, San Francisco, CA (with Diana Rudsten)
 * 1990 “The Blood/Brain Barrier” Space 46 Boston, MA
 * 1988 “Neuroanatomy, Perspective & Exorcism” Art Camp Boston, MA

Awards and grants

 * “Restless Dust” Iris F. Litt Award. Clayman Institute, Stanford University, 2007
 * Adaline Kent Award. San Francisco, CA 2003
 * Anonymous Was A Woman Award. New York, NY 2002
 * Wallace Gerbode Visual Arts Award. San Francisco, CA 2001
 * Chauncey McKeever Fine Art Award. San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, CA 1994
 * Jacob K. Javits Fellow. U.S. Department of Education 1991 - 1994