Orisegun Bennett-Olomidun received his MA from Columbia College Chicago in Interdisciplinary Arts with a concentration in paper making. His primary focus was producing sculptural works in conjunction with performance exploration. Previously, Bennett received his BFA degree from the University of Cincinnati, majoring in painting with a printmaking minor. He also completed two years of graduate work in the Department of Telecommunications at Kent State University while producing a television program for the campus station.

Bennett is an artist of interdisciplinary talents with highly acclaimed works in public art, studio concentrations in painting, printmaking, sculpture, graphics, sound, installations, and performances. After joining the artists of Chicago Public Art Group, his public art productions have been concentrated in mosaic murals and natural found object installations. He has exhibited extensively in Ohio, Illinois, and his home state of Virginia.

Bennett has been a principle participant in many arts discussions and review panels as well as an a member of the board of directors of the Chicago Public Art Group, the New Organization of Visual Arts in Cleveland, and the Betty Shabazz International Charter School in Chicago.

Orisegun Bennett-Olomidun Artist Statement

The exploration of the energy, spirit, and power of creativity has been the goal of my personal and professional artistic pursuits. Twenty-five years of studying, experimenting, producing and critiquing art, have made me a veteran of many forms of artistic expression. Many of these forms explored are distinctively at opposite ends of the artistic spectrum in media, technique, and presentation. It has been the spirit of creativity and my need to be immersed in it that has inspired me to follow many aesthetic roads.

My intent is to continuously explore how art transforms the environment in which it is placed, performed, and experienced. The intent of my work is to act as a personal lightening rod—connecting to and expanding the viewers’ consciousness. A function of the work I do in any media, classroom, or presentation is to serve as permanent or transient altars, where one may be emotionally and spiritually recharged and rejuvenated within one’s personal self and life force.

I strive to challenge the viewer to consider and reconsider reality and all its possibilities. I have constantly challenged myself through media, forms of expression, occupations, and personal development to strike chords in the spiritual and physical environment that will vibrate and resound. The work should always be alive, inspiring viewers to reexamine the reality around them, not merely as tangible objects, but also as ideas manifest in a physical form. These forms are absorbed into the viewer’s psyche, leaving only a trace of remembrance, an experience that was, for maybe only a brief moment, part of one’s existence or reality. These glimmers of aesthetic thought continue to lead to other moments of inspiration and creativity, producing tangible forms of solid space and time.

Currents of Inspiration, Aspiration, and Transformation, 1997, tile mosaic by Orisegun Olomidun and Rob Moriarty.


Road to Wisdom, 1999, ceramic tile mosaic, by Orisegun Olomidun and Mirtes Zwierzynski.


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