Carmelle Safdie

Adjunct Instructor

Carmelle Safdie works with material tests and modular systems, making artworks out of opaque and transparent colored glass fused onto silver, copper, and steel. Her most recent exhibition was presented in an East Village hardware store with Desnivel Gallery. Safdie’s work with artists estates includes directing the Irwin Rubin Archive, where she researches and preserves the work and teachings of Irwin Rubin (1930-2006, A’52), including his decades of teaching Color at Cooper Union. Safdie also teaches in the Visual & Critical Studies and Art History department at the School of Visual Arts, and has published writings with Spaces Archives and the Smithsonian Archives of American Art. She was an artist in residence at the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, received a BFA from Cooper Union in 2005, and an MFA from the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, Bard College in 2012.

Continuity Test – White Under Flux, vitreous enamel on enameled steel, anodized aluminum, rubber and stainless-steel hardware, 20 x 5 inches, installed in Hardware at H&W Hardware, 2025

  • Founded by inventor, industrialist and philanthropist Peter Cooper in 1859, The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art offers education in art, architecture and engineering, as well as courses in the humanities and social sciences.

  • “My feelings, my desires, my hopes, embrace humanity throughout the world,” Peter Cooper proclaimed in a speech in 1853. He looked forward to a time when, “knowledge shall cover the earth as waters cover the great deep.”

  • From its beginnings, Cooper Union was a unique institution, dedicated to founder Peter Cooper's proposition that education is the key not only to personal prosperity but to civic virtue and harmony.

  • Peter Cooper wanted his graduates to acquire the technical mastery and entrepreneurial skills, enrich their intellects and spark their creativity, and develop a sense of social justice that would translate into action.