Faculty
The ITI faculty offer a wide variety of approaches to the
written and visual arts. All are working contemporary artists who
publish and exhibit their work in national and international
contexts. Our faculty are dedicated to innovative approaches and
traditions that value psychologically, culturally and politically
engaged work.
Melissa Catanese lives in Pittsburgh and is
founder of Spaces
Corners, an artist-run photobook shop and project space. She
most recently exhibited in Secondhand at Pier 24 Photography in San
Francisco and in The Photographer’s Playspace at the Aperture
Foundation in New York. She has been editing from a vast collection
of over 20,000 photographs belonging to collector Peter J. Cohen
for some years, and in 2012 she authored the celebrated photobook
Dive Dark Dream Slow (The Ice Plant, 2012).
Ed Panar is a photographer and bookmaker
currently residing in the forested hills and hollows of Pittsburgh.
He has published numerous photobooks including: Nothing Changes
if Nothing Changes (Spaces Corners & The Ice Plant, 2013),
Salad Days (Gottlund Verlag, 2011), Animals That Saw
Me (The Ice Plant, 2011), Same Difference (Gottlund
Verlag, 2010), and Golden Palms (J&L Books, 2007). His
photographs and books have been exhibited internationally at venues
including: The Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, Nofound
Photofair, Paris, The New York Photography Festival and the
Cleveland Museum of Art.
In 2014, Catanese and Panar were artists-in-residence at the
Carnegie Museum of Art where they programmed The Sandbox: At Play
With The Photobook. Together in 2016, they served as The Georgette
and Richard Koopman Distinguished Chair in the Visual Arts at the
Hartford Art School.