Alan Powell has been working as a visual artist for fifty years. From 1971 until the mid 1990’s he worked almost exclusively with video and electronic imaging. Powell was a founding member of the Electron Movers, Providence, Rhode Island’s first Media Arts Center after completing a BFA degree from the Rhode Island School of Design.  His video work in collaboration with his deceased partner Connie Coleman spans the thirty years and has been exhibited at The Kitchen, Hallswalls, CEPA, Squeaky Wheel, The Alternative Museum, and The Museum of the Moving Image in New York; the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia; The Long Beach Museum in California and the Musee d’Arte Moderne in Paris. Together Coleman and Powell extended their practice in electronic imaging to videotape, sculptural installation, digital photography and traditional printmaking. The conceptual range of their collaboration extended from formal investigations of electronic media, experiment documentary, and socio political installations about modern culture, language and politics. Their videotapes have been broadcast on Swiss, Danish and Japanese television and in the United States on the Learning Channel and PBS.  Their video work has recently been featured at the James A. Michener Museum in Doylestown, PA and the Hunterdon Museum of Art in Clinton, NJ. Their video work from their thirteen years as Artist-in- Residence at the Experimental Television Center is in the archives at Cornell University Library. Five of those video pieces are in distribution by Electronic Arts Intermix in NYC.

        His artistic investigation into electronic tools reflects a belief that video is a malleable medium like clay or paint. Powell’s involvement with video spans both the development of community video and giving voice to “everyone.” His involvement with electronic media also extends from the idea that electronic tools are cybernetic extension of our senses and body. It can be used formally to investigate its own inherent properties and be used as window to the world around us. For the past four years Alan Powell has been working closely with a community of artists with intellectual disabilities (Studio 190) to extend their voices through both traditional and electronic media. He is currently on the Board of TermiteTV, a Philadelphia based video art and media collective doing both experimental and socially focused work with new technologies and Signal Culture, a New York artist organization devoted to residencies using video and experimental technologies. In the last couple of years Alan Powell has been an Artist-in –Residence at Signal Culture; Artpark in Lewiston, NY; Mountain Lake Biological Station in Virginia, and the Platte Clove Nature Preserve in the Catskills.  Alan Powell’s current work investigates man’s relationship to his environment and the natural world. Currently a Professor Emeritus at Arcadia University in Glenside, PA., Alan Powell spends much of his time making his work at his home in the Catskill Mountains in New York.   

Procreate Drawings

In 2017, Alan Powell started to use his iPad as his sketch book. Traveling the mountains in wet conditions, he found that it was more flexible than paper. He has continued with these drawings, which are a mix of digital photography and drawing with an electronic pen.