[NAME]

Westen Charles is a Miami-based artist and professor who co-founded the non-profit art space Locust Projects in 1998 and currently serves on the Executive Board. He earned his BFA from Pratt Institute in 1995 and his MFA in sculpture from the University of Miami in 1999. Charles’ approach to creating work has taken various forms throughout his career, however, there is a common concern and affinity for making meaning through discovery and associative potential. Charles is an obsessive collector by nature and his art practice is often inspired by researching and organizing the things he collects. Charles has worked with unusual materials such as laundry lint, sports trophies, thrift store bowling balls, and rare antique gambling chips. He manipulates form and function while creating visually riveting work with a conceptual edge. His most recent art projects have investigated consequential figures in history, leading towards exhibitions that extend into large-scale installations that are accompanied by published research articles. Charles has exhibited in galleries, museums and alternative spaces,locally, nationally and internationally including the Curfew Tower- Northern Ireland, Officinas Culturales- Sao Paulo, Stefen Stux Gallery- NYC, NFA Gallery- Chicago, and in Florida at the Fredric Snitzer Gallery, South Florida Arts Center, The Frost Museum, The Ringling Museum of Art, The Lowe Art Museum, Locust Projects, The HistoryMiami Museum and [NAME] Publications.