Profile
The Signature Project, which Dunning has performed at hundreds of schools, colleges and corporate events, weaves common threads that bind us all together. He’ll perform the show, which has earned rave reviews off Broadway, in Room 302.
Originally from Dublin, Ireland, Dunning studied engineering before joining the merchant marines and traveling throughout the world. He served as a volunteer mission worker in India for a year before returning to Ireland and establishing himself as a major contributor to Dublin’s visual arts, doing large-scale installations and bold abstract paintings.
In 1990, he moved to the United States, spending three years as the artist in residence at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry in Portland, Oregon, where he now lives. He spends several months each year on the East Coast, performing The Signature Project for all grades of students.
At The Signature Project’s core is a huge 76-foot-by-36-foot mural, which will be comprised of 171 canvases layered with hidden secrets. The project was conceived in 1992, with Dunning seeking to create a new artform: a human tapestry that could be completed only by collaborating with over 1 million people.
The project is a combination of theater, performance art, visual arts, music, mathematics, science and technology and cultural diversity. The finished painting will be a collection of layered images, one of which will be made entirely of individual signatures, while others will be revealed by using X-rays, magnetic fields or ultraviolet lights.
The painting is constantly changing and evolving as people contribute their own signatures to the larger artwork, adding perspectives and ideas that make the world so special and wonderful, beyond imagination.
Sessions