Visiting Artists – Archive
Visiting Curator: Brooke Anderson
Lecture: Friday, April 22nd 2011 at 12pm in the Grace Street Theater, 934 W. Grace Street
Brooke Davis Anderson is Deputy Director for Curatorial Planning at LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art). From 1999-2010 she was the founding director and curator of The Contemporary Center at the American Folk Art Museum, New York. Anderson's memorable projects at the Museum included countless exhibitions devoted to the self-taught artist Henry Darger, as well as Obsessive Drawing, Dargerism: Contemporary Artists and Henry Darger and Approaching Abstraction. In 2007-2008 she organized the exhibition, Martin Ramirez, which was accompanied by a publication and toured the United States receiving wide acclaim. She has written and lectured extensively on American art, in particular in African American art and the work of contemporary self-taught artists and has contributed to numerous catalogues and monographs, including Henry Darger, New York (Prestel, 2009) and Martin Ramirez: The Last Works (Pomegranate, 2008).
Lecture: "From Adolf Wolfli to Henry Darger: An Introduction to Art Brut"
This lecture will introduce the audience to the history of art brut, or Outsider Art, around the world and throughout the twentieth century. Ms. Anderson will discuss several artists who make singular paintings, idiosyncratic sculptures and compelling works on paper without the benefit of a formal art education. Some of the artists to be discussed include the "grandfather of art brut" Adolf Wolfli, as well as Henry Darger, Martin Ramirez, Bessie Harvey, and Purvis Young.
Visiting Curator: Wyona Lynch-McWhite
Lecture: Monday, April1 18th 2011 at 12pm in the Fine Arts Bldg., 1000 W. Broad Street Room 238
Lecture: Craft, Museums, and Collectors: Future interpretation of the field
Wyona Lynch-McWhite is the Executive Director of Fuller Craft Museum, New England’s only museum of contemporary craft. The museum is dedicated to the objects, ideas, and insight that inspire both patrons and artists to explore life through the art of contemporary craft. Prior to that, she was Director and Chief Curator of the Eleanor D. Wilson Museum, the art museum of Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia. She began her museum career at The Museum of Contemporary Photography and then joined the staff of the Art Institute of Chicago. She currently serves as a board member on the American Association of Museums Museum Management Committee. Previously, she served on the College Art Association Museum Committee and was a Director at Large on the South Eastern Museums Conference governing council. She has served as national grant reviewer for the National Endowment for the Arts and the Institute of Museum and Library Services. She was a 2006 participant in the Getty Center’s Museum Leadership Institute. Among her curated exhibitions include Carrie Mae Weems: to be continued which was presented at the Visual Arts Center of Richmond in 2006.
Visiting Curator: Nicholas Bell
Lecture: Friday, April 8th 2011 at 12pm in the Fine Arts Bldg., 1000 W. Broad Street Room 238
Lecture: Craft Futures: Curating the Revolution
Nicholas Bell has been a curator of contemporary craft and decorative arts at the Smithsonian American Art Museum since 2009. Bell served as a curatorial associate at the museum’s Renwick Gallery for a year prior to his appointment. His research interests include American craft, decorative arts in America from the 17th through the 21st centuries, folk and self taught art, and theories of material culture. Bell is curator for the upcoming exhibitions, History in the Making: Renwick Craft Invitational 2011 and the Renwick’s 40th anniversary project, 40 under 40: Craft Futures (2012). He was curator of A Revolution in Wood: The Bresler Collection (2010) and the coordinating curator for the exhibition Staged Stories: Renwick Craft Invitational 2009 He is author of the catalog for A Revolution Wood: The Bresler Collection, co-author of the catalog for History in the Making: Renwick Craft Invitational 2011 and has written for numerous publications, including Winterthur Portfolio and American Furniture. Bell earned a bachelor’s degree from Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia (2005), and a master’s degree from the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture at the University of Delaware (2008).
Visiting Artist: Michael Schunke
Lecture: Thursday, April 7th 2011 at 12pm in the Fine Arts Bldg., 1000 W. Broad Street Room 238
Lecture: the outside looking in
Michael Schunke began making glass at the Tyler School of Art in 1989. He has worked with some of the worlds leading glass makers and artists including Lino Tagliapietra, Pino Signoretto and Dan Dailey. He was visiting associate professor at the Toyama City Institute of Glass Art from 1996 to 1999, where he taught advanced glassmaking. He has served on the board of directors for the Glass Art Society, Seattle WA and The Creative Glass of America, Millville NJ.
He currently lives and works in West Grove PA where he has a private studio. www.michaeljschunke.com
Visiting Curator: Valerie Cassel Oliver
The departments of Craft/Material Studies + Kinetic Imaging present
Lecture: Interwoven Life with Textile - Monday, March 28th 2011 at 3pm in the Grace Street Theater, 934 W. Grace Street
Valerie Cassel Oliver is senior curator at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston. Prior to this, she was director of the Visiting Artist Program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and program specialist at the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2000, she co-curated the Biennial for the Whitney Museum of American Art. She has organized numerous exhibitions including the acclaimed “Double Consciousness: Black Conceptual Art Since 1970” in 2005 and, with Dr. Andrea Barnwell Brownlee, “Cinema Remixed and Reloaded: Black Women Artists and the Moving Image,” in 2008. Most recently, she organized the group exhibition, Hand+Made Contemporary: The Performative Impulse in Art and Craft, presented earlier this year 2010 . Her forthcoming exhibitions include a retrospective of Fluxus artist, Benjamin Patterson scheduled for Fall, 2010 as well as a survey exhibition on painter Donald Moffett slated for 2011. Cassel Oliver has lectured widely and has published extensively on contemporary art. In 2006, she received a Getty Curatorial Research Fellowship and was among ten fellows selected for the 2009 Class of the Center for Curatorial Leadership in New York. She is an editorial advisory committee member for the journals Callaloo, Gulf Coast, and Artl!es and serves on the board of directors for Project Row Houses in Houston.
Exploring the premise of this exhibition which looks at the intersection of performance and craft. The lecture will provide audiences with an overview of the installation and the various activities and performances which took place over its presentation at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston from May through July, 2010. The Performative Impulse in Art and Craft was presented at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston from May 14, 2010 – July 25, 2010. This dynamic group exhibition provided a snapshot into the expansive and innovative means by which artists from diverse background and generations continue to usurp the traditional precepts surrounding art and craft. Through the incorporation of performance, the works featured not only served to broaden the conceptual ideas surrounding craft but also, expose the expansive practices that challenge traditional ideas surrounding art rooted in the handmade.
Visiting Artist: Kiyomi Iwata
Lecture: Thursday, March 24th 2011 at 11am in the Fine Arts Bldg., 1000 W. Broad Street Room 238
"Interwoven Life with Textile" A lecture on Transparent and Translucent work in silk and metal and how the material evolved into using once discarded silk thread called "Kibiso" Kiyomi Iwata is an internationally recognized artist. Born in Kobe, Japan, she studied at Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, VA; Penland School of Craft, NC; Haystack Mountain School of Craft, ME and New School of Social Research, NYC.
website: http://www.kiyomiwata.com
Visiting Artist: Theaster Gates
Lecture: Tuesday, March 1st 2011 @ 5pm in the Grade Street Theater
Co-Sponsered by The department of Sculpture+Extended Media
If pressed to describe Theaster Gates work in one word, it would be transformative. In his performances, installations, and urban interventions, Gates an artist, musician, and cultural planner, as well as director of arts program development for the University of Chicago transforms spaces, relationships, traditions and perceptions.
Exploring architecture as a tool for mediation and meditation, Gates draws from both urbanism and art to provide what he terms moments of interstitial beauty in Chicago's South Side neighborhoods. His project, Temple, comprises two neighboring houses which interiors he completely rebuilt of donated and repurposed materials to create spaces for workshops, exhibitions, and other public events on topics of race, art, and politics.
Gates work is funded by the Joyce Foundation, the Graham Foundation, and the African American Art Alliance. In 2010 alone, he has performed and exhibited at the Whitney Biennial and the Armory Show in New York, the Milwaukee Art Museum, Brunno David Gallery and Pulitzer Museum of Art in St. Louis, and the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston. He also completed residencies with the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, WI; Museum of Contemporary Craft, Portland, OR; and Artadia, New York. He is a 2010-11 Loeb Fellow at Harvard Graduate School of Design.
website: http://theastergates.com/home.html
Visiting Arist: Soyeon Kim
Lecture: Thursday, February 17th 2011 @11am in the Bowe Street Bldg., Room 535
Lecture: Flower that understands, Flower that speaks
Soyeon Kim is a jewelry maker and a metalsmith who currently teaches in the Metals Program as a Visiting Assistant Professor. She received her MFA from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and BFA from the Rochester Institute of Technology. Soyeon is the recipient of the 2008 National Educational Endowment Scholarship by the Society of North American Goldsmiths and has received numerous awards and scholarships. She actively participates in exhibitions nationally and internationally. She is currently working on a new body of work for an upcoming solo exhibition in April. Website: http://www.studiosoyeon.com/studiosoyeon.html
Visiting Artist: Stephanie Syjuco
Lecture: Monday, February 14th 2011 @2:30pm in the Bowe Street Bldg., Room 535
Lecture: Restless Objects and Diverted Production Processes
STEPHANIE SYJUCO's recent work uses the tactics of bootlegging, reappropriation, and fictional fabrications to address issues of cultural biography, labor, and economic globalization. Working primarily in sculpture and installation, her projects leverage open-source systems, shareware logic, and flows of capital, creating frictions between high ideals and everyday materials. This has included starting a global collaborative project with crochet crafters to counterfeit high-end consumer goods; presenting a parasitic art counterfeiting event, "COPYSTAND: An Autonomous Manufacturing Zone" for Frieze Projects, London (2009); and “Shadowshop,” an alternative vending outlet embedded at SFMOMA exploring the ways in which artists are navigating the production, consumption, and dissemination of their work (2010).
BIO: Born in the Philippines, she received her MFA from Stanford University and BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. Her work has been shown nationally and internationally, and included in exhibitions at P.S.1, the Whitney Museum of American Art, SFMOMA, The Contemporary Museum Honolulu, The San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art, The Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, and the California Biennial at the Orange County Museum of Art, among others. In 2007 she led counterfeiting workshops at artspaces in Istanbul, Beijing, and Manila and in 2009 contributed proxy sculptures for P.S.1/MoMA's joint exhibition, "1969." She has taught at Stanford University, The California College of the Arts, UC Berkeley, and Carnegie Mellon University. A recipient of a 2009 Joan Mitchell Painters and Sculptors Award, she lives and works in San Francisco. http://www.stephaniesyjuco.com
Visiting Curator: Namita Gupta Wiggers
Lecture: Monday, February 7th 2011 @12pm in the Bowe Street Bldg., Room 535
Lecture: Curating Craft When Everything is Everything
Namita Gupta Wiggers is Curator of Museum of Contemporary Craft in partnership with Pacific Northwest College of Art, where she leads the exhibition, collection and public programs. Prior to joining the Museum as curator in 2004, Wiggers worked as a studio art jeweler, an instructor at Columbia College, Chicago, a senior researcher at e-Lab, and the Coordinator of Public Programs at Blaffer Gallery, University of Houston. She holds a BA from Rice University, Houston, TX and pursued doctoral studies at The University of Chicago.
Fountainhead Fellows Lecture: Andréa Keys Connell & Lacey Jane Roberts
Lecture: Thursday, November 18th 2010 @ 5pm in the Fine Arts Bldg, Room 238
Andréa Keys Connell is one of the first Fountainhead Fellows in the VCUarts Department of Craft/Material Studies. She received her MFA from Ohio University in 2009 and her BFA from The Maryland Institute College of Art in 2002. She is an Assistant Professor of Art at Longwood University in Farmville, Va. For the 2010- 2011 school year she will be receiving a year leave of absence from Longwood to fulfill her awarded Fountainhead Fellowship. Andréa has exhibited her work nationally in galleries such as the Archie Bray Foundation, The Society for Contemporary Craft, The Clay Studio, and Roy G Biv Gallery. She has had numerous solo exhibitions in venues such as The Florida Holocaust Museum, The Sculpture Center, and the Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft. She will be in the VCUarts Department of Craft/Material Studies Fountainhead Fellows Exhibition at Page Bond Gallery in May 2011.
Andréa Keys Connell: http://andreakeys.com/home.html
Lacey Jane Roberts is one of the first Fountainhead Fellows in the VCUarts Department of Craft/Material Studies. She holds a MFA in Fine Arts and MA in Visual and Critical Studies from California College of the Arts. She completed a BA in Studio Art and a BA in English from the University of Vermont. Robert’s work has been shown most recently in The Bedford Gallery, The San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, the San Francisco Museum of Craft and Folk Art, Fresh Meat in the Gallery, Little Tree Gallery, solo exhibition at Southern Exposure in San Francisco that will open in January 2010, and the VCUarts Department of Craft/Material Studies Fountainhead Fellows Exhibition at Page Bond Gallery in May 2011.
Lacey Jane Robert: http://www.laceyjaneroberts.com/
Visiting Artist: Sung Yeoul Lee
Lecture: Friday, November 12th 2010 @ 12pm in the Bowe Street Bldg., Room 535
Sung-Yeoul Lee received his BFA from Kookmin University. He earned his MFA from University of Illinois Champaign- Urbana in 2005, where he worked with Professor Billie Jean Theide.. Sung-Yeol Lee is faculty at Oklahoma State University.
Lee won a grand prize at the Cheongju International Craft Biennale 2003, NICHE finalist, SNAG Educational Endowment Scholarship, and Lyndon Emerging Artist finalist. His work has been published in several books including 500 Lark series.
Sung-Yeoul Lee: http://www.sung-yeoullee.com/
Visiting Artist: Alexander Rosenberg
Lecture: Friday, October 8th 2010 @ 12pm in the Fine Arts Bldg, Room 238
Alexander Rosenberg is an artist and educator in the Crafts Department at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. He received a BFA from Rhode Island School of Design’s Glass program and has been fascinated with the material ever since. After a period of freelance fabrication and assisting several established artists with studio work and research, Alexander went on to MIT to study in a 2-year MS program in visual studies. Here, he continued his investigation of glass as a material, in conjunction with an interdisciplinary artistic practice that crossed over into many other media. Alexander Rosenberg: http://www.alexanderrosenberg.net/
Visiting Lecturer: Dr. John Vlach
Lecture: Monday, October 11th 2010 @ 1:00pm in the Fine Arts Bldg, Room 238
Co-Sponsered by The departments of Art History and African American Studies
Craft/Material Studies, Art History and African American Studies present visiting lecture Houses, Pots, and Quilts: The Scope of African-American Craft Traditions by John Vlach. Dr. John Vlach is one of the nation’s premier scholars on the subjects of African American folk art and plantation architecture. Vlach curated a riveting but controversial exhibit, Back of the Big House, and is the author or editor of eight books and over forty articles. Vlach has just released another book through the University of North Carolina Press titled The Planter’s Prospect: Privilege and Slavery in Plantation Paintings. He is a professor of American Studies and Anthropology at George Washington University and serves as the director of the folklife program..
Visiting Artist: Christina West
Lecture: Wednesday, October 20th 2010 @ 10:30am in the Fine Arts Bldg, Room 238
Christina West maintains her studio in Atlanta, GA where she is an assistant professor of ceramics at Georgia State University. She received her MFA from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University and her BFA from Siena Heights University in Adrian, MI. Christina was an artist-in-residence at the Archie Bray Foundation for Ceramic Arts from 2006-07, where she was awarded the Lilian Fellowship and this past summer was in residence at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts. Her work has been supported by a grants and fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the George Sugarman Foundation, the Mary L. Nohl Artist Fund and the Southeastern College Art Conference. Christina West: http://cwestsculpture.com/
Visiting Artist: Clare Verstegen
Lecture: Thursday, March 25th 2010 @ 2pm in the BFine Arts Bldg, Room 212
Clare Verstegen is a Professor of Art at Arizona State University, where she teaches fibers and surface design with an expertise in printed textiles. She received a MFA/Fibers from Cranbrook Academy of Art. Her work has been exhibited in numerous invitational exhibitions, most recently at Contemporary Art Space, Osaka, Japan (2005). Other international venues include Kyoto Art Museum, Senbikiya Gallery, Tokyo, Japan, Dague, Korea and the Franz Meyer Museum, Mexico City. In the United States her work has been exhibited at the Bellevue Art Museum, WA, Museum of Craft + Design, New York City, Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, PA, Craft Alliance Gallery, MO, Loveland Art Museum, CO, Lancaster Museum of Art, PA, Racine Art Museum, WI and the Phoenix Art Museum.
Visiting Critic: Janet Koplos
Lecture: Monday, March 1st 2010 @ 12:30pm in the Bowe Street Bldg, Room 535
image: drawing by Jane Manson
Janet Koplos is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Minnesota School of Journalism and Mass Communication who also holds a master’s degree in art history from Illinois State University. She has been writing about art since 1976 and has published more than 2,000 articles, reviews and essays in newspapers, magazines and catalogues in America, Europe and Japan. She lectures, juries and critiques frequently, and is a member of the Association Internationale des Critiques d’Art and the College Art Association. She lived in Tokyo from 1984 to 1989 and continues to write about Japanese contemporary art. She is the author of Contemporary Japanese Sculpture (New York, Abbeville Press, 1991) and The Unexpected (Museum Het Kruithuis, the Netherlands, 1997); her history of American studio craft (with co-author Bruce Metcalf), is forthcoming from the University of North Carolina Press. Since 1988 she has been associated with Art in America magazine, first as a freelancer, then a staff editor, now a contributing editor, and recently served as guest editor of American Craft magazine. She lives in New York City.
Visiting Artist: Wendy Maruyama
Lecture: Thursday, February 18th 2010 @ 11:00am in the Fine Arts Bldg, Room 238
Wendy Maruyama is a professor at San Diego State University and has been making furniture/art since 1970. Maruaya’s work is often inspired by extended residencies and visits to various countries such as France, England, Japan, Korea and China.
In the past 15 years her work has taken on stylistic influences from Asia. Born in La Junta, Colorado, to second-generation Japanese American parents, Maruyama has made several pilgrimages to the land of her heritage, Japan. At times reverent of Japan’s craft history and advanced technology, and appalled by Japan’s self-indulgent, materialistic and almost faceless and patriarchal society, she vacillates between creating works that both emulate and satirize contemporary Japan. Wendy Maruyama's website: http://wendymaruyama.com/home.html
Visiting Artist: Ayumi Horie
Lecture: Thursday, January 28th 2010 @ 3:00pm in the Bowe Street Bldg, Room 535
Demonstartion: Thursday, January 28th 9:00-12:00pppm in the Fine Arts Bldg. Clay Studio
Ayumi Horie received her BA from Mount Holyoke College, her BFA from New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University, and her MFA from the University of Washington in Seattle. She is on the board of the Archie Bray Foundation in Montana and has taught many workshops in functional ceramics and dry throwing across the U.S. and internationally including the Archie Bray, Haystack, Penland, Greenwich House Pottery, the Northern Clay Center, and the International Center for Ceramics in Denmark. Ayumi makes functional pottery in earthenware, drawing from folk traditions and comics in the U.S. and Japan. In 2008, she organized "Obamaware" a ceramics fundraiser for Obama's presidential campaign. Ayumi Horie works as a studio potter in upstate New York. Ayumi Horie's website: www.ayumihorie.com
Visiting Artist Lecture: Anders Ruhwald
Thursday, October 8th 2009 @ 12:00pm in the Bowe Street Bldg, Room 535
Co-Sponsored by the Department of Sculpture + Extended Media
Anders Ruhwald (born 1974, Denmark) lives and works in London and Detroit. He graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2005. Solo exhibitions include “The state of things” at The Museum of Art and Design in Copenhagen, “You in Between” at Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art in the UK as well as various gallery shows in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Stockholm, London, Copenhagen and Brussels. His work is represented in the collections of The Victoria and Albert Museum, The National Museum of Decorative Art (Norway), The National Museum (Sweden), The Swedish Arts Council, The Museum of Art and Design (Denmark) and several other public and private collections around the world. He was awarded the Sotheby’s Prize in the United Kingdom in 2007 and the Annie and Otto Detlefs Price in Denmark in 2005. Anders Ruhwald's website: www.ruhwald.net
Visiting Artist Lecture: Fred Fenster
Thursday, October 22nd 2009 @ 11:00am in the Fine Arts Building, Room 238
Fred Fenster was born in the Bronx N.Y in 1934. He received his B.S. in Ed. from C.C.N.Y in 1956 and taught in the New York City public school system for one and a half years. He received an M.F.A. in Metalsmithing from Cranbrook Academy of Art on 1960. In 1962 he was hired as an instructor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison to teach design, jewelry and craft classes in the Art department.
He Has Taught jewelry and metalsmithing classes as well as giving workshops in pewetersmithing and jewelry techniques at such school as Penland, Haystack, Peter's Valley, and Arrowmont.
His work is in numerous private and public collections such as Milwaulkee Art Museum, the Renwick Museum of the Smithsonian, the Detroit Art Institute, Yale University, art Museum, the Skirball Museum of Judaica in Cincinatti, and the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Seoul Korea, among others.
He was elected o Fellow of the American Crafts Council in 1995.
He received the third Hans Christensen Memorial Silversmithing award in 2002.
Fred Fenster continues a full time teaching commitment at the University of Wisconsin as well as jewelry making.
Visiting Artist Lecture: Helen Lee
Tuesday, November 3rd 2009 @ 12:30pm in the Bowe Street Bldg, Room 535
Helen Lee is an artist, designer, educator, and glassblower based in Oakland, California. She holds an MFA in Glass from RISD and a BSAD in Architecture from MIT. She has taught in the Sculpture Department at California College of Art, and at the MIT Glass Lab. She is currently an Affiliate Artist at Headlands and the Glassblower-in-Residence at Palo Alto High School. She also works as a freelance graphic designer, most recently for Celery Design Collaborative in Berkeley, CA. Helen Lee's website: http://pink-noise.org/index.html
Visiting Artist Lecture: Tom Loeser
Tuesday, February 24th @ 2:00pm in the Fine Arts Building, Room 238
Tom Loeser has been head of the wood/furniture area at the University of Wisconsin-Madison since 1991. He designs and builds one-of-a-kind functional objects that are often carved and painted and always based on the history of design and furniture-making as a starting point for developing new form and meaning. His artwork has been included in over 200 national and international exhibitions since 1981. He is represented in the collections of several museums and universities including the Museums of Fine Arts in Boston and Houston, The Renwick Gallery, The Cooper Hewitt Museum, The Yale University Art Gallery, The Milwaukee Museum of Art and the Brooklyn Museum. He has received four Visual Artist Fellowship Grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1993 he spent 6 months in Japan on an NEA Creative Artist Exchange Fellowship.
Visiting Artist Lecture: Frankie Flood
Friday, February 13th @ 11:00am in the Bowe Street Bldg, Room 535
Frankie Flood is an Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee where he is Director of Foundations and is actively involved with the Jewelry & Metalsmithing area at UWM. Flood is a graduate of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where he received his Master of Fine Art degree in Metalsmithing.
Flood utilizes the industrial processes of machining, stamping, anodizing, and powder coating to create one of a kind functional objects. His interest in machines and tools and the influence of his working class upbringing is a source of inspiration. Flood’s work investigates one of a kind objects and their role in a world based on mechanical reproduction.
Visiting Artist Lecture: Joyce Scott
Wednesday, February 11th @ 5:00pm in the Fine Arts Building, Room 238
Sculptor, jeweler, printmaker, installation artist, performance artist, and educator, Joyce J. Scott draws from influences as wide-ranging as her media: from African and Native American experiences to comic books, television, popular American culture sources and the contemporary culture as it exists on the streets of her Baltimore, MD, neighborhood. Scott is renowned for her striking creations and biting social commentary on issues such as racism, violence, sexism and stereotypes.
Joyce Scott received a B.F.A. degree from the Maryland Institute College of Art, and a M.F.A. in Crafts from Institute Allende in Mexico. For the past three decades, she has exhibited widely and is the recipient of prestigious honors from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, Anonymous Was a Woman, and the American Craft Council.
2009 Windmueller Lecture: Lewis Hyde
Tuesday, February 10th @ 5:30pm in the Grace Street Theatre
A recipient of a MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship, Fellow at Harvard University's
Berkman Center for Internet and Society,Hyde will speak about art and commerce.
A recent New York Times interview described Hyde's perspective on art: "Unlike a
commodity, whose value begins to decline the moment it changes hands, an artwork
gains value from the act of being circulated--published, shown, written about, passed
from generation to generation..."
Visiting Artist Lecture: Mark Zirpel
November 18, 2008 @ 5:00pm in the Bowe Street Bldg, Room 535
Zirpel’s work explores a convergence between art and science. He has had numerous national exhibitions. In 2006, he produced a large sculptural work titled “Water Organ”. Exhibited at the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, it consisted of a 1000lb assemblage of glass, water and steel designed to utilize the siphoning action of water to pump air to activate reeds in a sound installation. Last year during a two-month fellowship at the Australian National University he produced blown forms related to the human cochlea and the perception of hearing.
Visiting Artist Lecture: Andy Cooperman
November 17, 2008 @ 5:00pm in the Bowe Street Bldg, Room 535
Andy Cooperman is a metalsmith, writer, and teacher who lives in Seattle, WA. His work is featured in galleries nationwide. He is a past recipient of a WESTAF/NEA Fellowship, and has taught as a visiting lecturer at the University of Washington. In addition to one -of -a -kind objects, Andy also works with clients as a custom jeweler and commission metalsmith. His work can be found in the permanent collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, Central College, Pella Iowa and appeared most recently in the exhibitions The Art Of Gold, Metalisms and Metalsmiths Linking. Publications include the books Art Jewelry Today, 1000 Rings, 500 Brooches, The Craft Of Silversmithing, The Penland Book of Jewelry.
Andy Cooperman's website: http://www.andycooperman.com/
Visiting Artist Lecture: Deb Todd-Wheeler
November 5, 2008 @ 12:00pm in the Bowe Street Bldg, Room 535
Using the vernacular of the 19th century, a time when art and science were more closely linked, an era when technology was still messy, and mechanization suggested easy living, mixed with the DIY optimism of the 1960s, Todd-Wheeler investigates alternative avenues for power that draw from the kinetic potential of communal activity. These interactive sculptures and installations aim to intertwine the failures of our consumer culture and the Utopian hopes of sustainable initiatives.
Students will be working with Deb Todd Wheeler on a collaborative project using cold connection techniques to join plastic bottles and bags into a larger sculpture determined by participants.
Deb Todd-Wheeler's website: http://babel.massart.edu/~debtoddwheeler/
Visiting Artist Lecture: Sharif Bey
November 4, 2008 @ 10:00am in the Fine Arts Building, Room 238
Sharif Bey spent his formative years as an apprentice, in ceramics, at the Manchester Craftsmen's Guild's in Pittsburgh. He holds a B.F.A from Slippery Rock University, an M.F.A from The University of North Carolina at Greensboro and a Ph. D in Art Education from Penn State University. Bey is a Fulbright scholar and has been a visiting artist at the McColl Center for Visual Arts, The Academy of Fine Arts and Design and the University of Kentucky. His ceramic/mixed-media works explore traditional and contemporary notions of function, ritual and identity. Currently Bey is an assistant professor of Art Education at Winston Salem State University in North Carolina.
Visiting Artist Lecture: Garth Johnson
October 28, 2008 @ 7:00pm in the Bowe Street Bldg, Room 535
The Extreme Craft Roadshow is a slide presentation covering many of the “Greatest Hits” of www.extremecraft.com. The artists and projects presented in the lecture are by turns hilarious, inspirational, deranged, sexual and downright disturbing. The Extreme Craft Roadshow presents the audience with a portrait of the blurred line between art and craft at present--fine artists using craft materials to get their point across, craft artists making work so audacious that it can only be considered fine art as well as people using traditional materials to express radical ideas.
Garth Johnson is a studio artist, writer and educator who lives in Eureka, California. His website, Extreme Craft is a compendium of craft masquerading as art, art masquerading as craft and craft extending its middle finger.
Visiting Artist Lecture: Mark Shapiro
October 14, 2008 @ 2:30pm in the Bowe Street Bldg, Room 535
Mark Shapiro has been making pots in his western Massachusetts studio for over 20 years. He is frequent workshop leader, lecturer, panelist, and writer. His interviews of Karen Karnes and Michael Simon are in the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution and he is currently working on a monograph to accompany a traveling retrospective of Karnes's work. He recently curated “Containing History” at the Albany (NY) Institute of History and Art, a show of contemporary potters influenced by historical ceramics. He is a contributing advisor to Studio Potter and is on the advisory board of Ceramics Monthly. His own work was featured in the 4th World Biennale in Icheon, Korea, and is in many public collections including the Mint Museum, the Smithsonian, the Newark Museum, the International Museum of Ceramic Art at Alfred, and the Racine Art Museum.
Mark will speak about how his interest in researching and documenting the lives and work of early American and contemporary potters has informed his own studio practice.
Visiting Artist Lecture: Kate Kretz
October 8, 2008 @ 10:00am in the Fine Arts Building, Room 238
Kate Kretz’s work has appeared in over 30 International and 65 domestic newspapers including The Herald Tribune, The NY TImes, The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, & has been featured in ArtPapers, Surface Design, Vanity Fair Italy, ELLE Japon, and FiberArts magazines. Her controversial painting “Blessed Art Thou” received news coverage on NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN & Fox networks, and hundreds of news sources around the world.
Exhibitions include the Museum of Arts & Design, Van Gijn Museum, Museo Medici, Exit Art, The Frost Museum, Wignall Museum, Huntsville Museum, Georgia Museum of Art, Penn State University, Morris Museum, Georgia State University, Telfair Museum, Agnes Scott College, Georgia State University, Catholic University, The Fort Lauderdale Museum, and The Fiber Arts Foundation.
Her lecture will focus on her work, which moves through drawing, painting, sculpture, and fiber-based media.
Visiting Artist Lecture: Elizabeth Turrell
September 26, 2008 @ 12:00pm in the Bowe Street Bldg, Room 535
Elizabeth Turrell is Senior Research Fellow in Enamel, University of the West of England, Bristol. She heads the Enamel Research Centre and the large-scale enamel facility and is director of the International Contemporary Vitreous Enamel Archive.
Elizabeth exhibits and lectures nationally and internationally; has taught workshop in the UK, USA, Sweden, Holland and India; she is a director of Studio Fusion Gallery in London, which is the only gallery in the UK specialising in enamel. She has curated several exhibitions including The Enamel Experience: International Badge Exhibition that is currently touring galleries in the USA.
Elizabeth Turrell’s talk will include images of her work and the work of the Enamel Research Centre at UWE.
Visiting Artist Lecture: Lydia Matthews
September 24, 2008 @ 6:00pm in the Fine Arts Building, Room 238
Lydia Matthews is an educator, writer, curator, and cultural activist who focuses on contemporary art, design and craft practices in relation to critical contexts, local cultures and transnational systems. Before becoming Dean of Academic Programs at Parsons The New School for Design, she taught contemporary art and cultural theory at California College of the Arts in San Francisco, where she co-founded CCA's MA program in Visual Criticism and directed their MFA in Fine Arts. She has published and organized diverse curatorial projects internationally, including within the volatile post-Soviet city of Tbilisi, Georgia. Her lecture at VCU will reflect on ways to research, make and act critically in a world full of wicked problems.
Visiting Artist Lecture: Biba Schutz
September 15, 2008 @ 3:30pm in the Fine Arts Building, Room 238
New York artist Biba Schutz has a BA in design from American University in Washington, DC, as well as education in printmaking from Pratt Graphics Center in NY, and fiber from Instituto de Allende, in Mexico. Her work has been exhibited nationally in solo and group exhibitions in New York City, Philadelphia, Cleveland, St. Louis, and Boston. Schutz has been featured in numerous publications. Her work can be viewed at www.bibaschutz.com.
Visiting Artist Lecture: Rebecca Murtaugh
September 4, 2008 @ 10:00am in the Bowe Street Building, Room 535
Rebecca Murtaugh currently lives in Brooklyn and Central New York. She received her Master of Fine Arts from Virginia Commonwealth University and Bachelor of Science from the Pennsylvania State University. Her work has been exhibited nationally in solo and group exhibitions in New York City, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Washington D.C., Baltimore, Richmond, and San Francisco. Her work has been published in the New York Times, Artworld Digest, and Shamenet Magazine. She is an Assistant Professor of Art at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York where she teaches Sculpture, Ceramics, and Critical Theory. Her work can be viewed at www.rebeccamurtaugh.com.
FAB Gallery Exhibition: Nancy Blum
1000 W. Broad Street
April 8 - April 29, 2008
Gallery Talk April 24th, 2008 @ 4:00 PM
Nancy Blum currently lives and works between New York City and Richmond, VA. She received her MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Arts. Nancy makes drawings, sculpture and installations that explore pattern and the architecture of nature. Her works are visceral, meditative, and rhythmic. Nancy recently completed a public art commissions for the Charlotte Area Transit System in Charlotte, NC, an the Metro Transit Authority, New York. As well, fifty manhole covers, produced by the Seattle Arts Commission and Seattle City Lights, are placed in heavily trafficked parts of that city and a 77-foot wall of aluminum and resin ‘flowers’ were permanently mounted in the Seattle/Tacoma International Airport. Nancy has been both and artist in residence and a teacher at countless institutions and her work has been featured extensively in solo exhibitions at institutions and galleries across the country. Her work has been recognized through fellowships with the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, the Peter S. Reed Foundation, and the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation.
For more information about the artist, visit www.nancyblum.com
Visiting Artist Lecture: Trey Hill
April 9th, 2008 @ 10:00 AM in the Fine Arts Building, Room 238
Trey Hill is currently a visiting faculty at the University of South Carolina in Columbia. He spent last summer building work in China at the Fu Le International Ceramic Art Museum in Fuping. Trey also spent time at the Archie Bray Foundation in Helena, MT and later at the LH Project in Joseph, OR. Hill received his MFA from San Jose State University in 2002.
Visiting Artist Lecture: Heath Matysek-Snyder
March 27th, 2008 @ 11:00 AM in the Fine Arts Building, Room 238
Heath Matysek-Snyder received his BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2000 and his MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2004. Following graduate school Matysek-Snyder was a Resident Artist at San Diego State University, in the Furniture Design program from 2005-2007. Currently he is Tom Loeser’s sabbatical replacement at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Matysek-Snyder has been included in both national and international exhibitions.
Here and Now: Wood and Would Not
February 25 - March 22nd, 2008
Opening Reception, March 7th
Gallery Talk with Karl Burkheimer, Andy Buck, and Katie Hudnall - March 22nd @ 2pm
Here and Now: Wood and Would Not, curated by Kathy Emerson of Quirk Gallery and organized by William Hammersley, professor of Wood in the VCU Craft/Material Studies Department, will feature exciting work by Hammersley and seven alumni who have studied with him over the past 30 years.
The work featured in this exhibition challenges historical ideas about the functionality of wood as a medium and explores a variety of aesthetic concepts concerning space, form and surface. Work varies from pieces that are abstract and imaginative deconstructed objects to works that perform as functional pieces while also questioning the line between practical object and art piece at the same time.
A significant theme of this exhibition will be the connective thread between the participating artists and their past and current involvement with Virginia Commonwealth University. Participating artists include: Andy Buck, Karl Burkheimer, Graham Campbell, William Hammersley, Katie Hudnall, Heath Matysek-Snyder, Travis Townsend and Charles Yeager.
Katie Hudnall, Karl Burkheimer and Andy Buck will be giving a gallery talk on March 22, 2008 from 2:00-4:00 pm at Quirk.
Visiting Artist Lecture: Travis Townsend
February 28th, 2008 @ 11:00 AM in the Fine Arts Building, Room 238
Travis Townsend (MFA 2000, VCU Crafts) has had solo exhibitions at the Weston Gallery (Cincinnati) and the New Arts Program (Kutztown, PA) and has been included in group exhibitions at Rosenfeld Gallery (Philadelphia); Manifest Gallery (Cincinnati); Kendall College (Grand Rapids, MI); Spaces Gallery (Cleveland); Lehigh University (PA); and Zone: Chelsea (New York). He is a recipient of an American Craft Council Emerging Artist Grant, a Kentucky Arts Council Fellowship, a Virginia A. Groot Foundation Grant, and a Young Sculptors Award from Miami University. Townsend lives in Lexington, KY and teaches drawing and design at Eastern Kentucky University.
Visiting Artist Lecture: Nikki Blair
February 13th, 2008 at 10:00 AM in the Bowe Street Building, Room 535
The Department of Craft/Material Studies is proud to present Nikki Blair Wednesday, February 13th at 10am in the Bowe Street Building Room 535.
Blair is an associate professor at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She has had exhibitions in both museums and galleries across the country including, Harbor Gallery in Boston, MA, The North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh NC, Baltimore Clay Works in Baltimore, MD and Spaces in Cleveland, OH. In 2007, she was selected as an artist-in-residence at the International Ceramic Research Center in Skaelskor, Denmark where she also exhibited at the Apple House Gallery. She has also participated in residencies in the United States and Spain. Her work was recently included in the book Confrontational Ceramics, THe artist at Social Critic by Judith Schwartz and in the Publication Clay Art International 07/08. Her Lecture will cover the work she has created over the past seven years
Liz MurenBerg from Ox-Bow School of Art
February 5th, 2008 at 12:00 PM in the Fine Arts Building, Room 238
On February 5th at 12:00 pm In Craft/ Material Studies Room 238, Liz MurenBerg-a representative from Ox-Bow school of art and artists’ residency, will present a slide show on the program’s offerings and opportunities.
Ox-Bow offers one and two-week intensives for credit and non-credit in six main studio areas. Bringing together faculty, students, and visiting artists from around the nation, Ox-Bow is both a school and a community, focused on experimentation, discourse, and the process of artmaking.
Ox-Bow is designed to offer degree-seeking students the opportunity to concentrate on their studio practice completely. It also gives them a chance to explore studio areas that they might not necessarily have access to during their undergraduate and graduate careers. Sometimes this access is in specific studio areas like glass or papermaking, or in specific processes like wood-firing in ceramics or collograph prints. More and more, however, it also means a new take on current issues in artmaking, and confronting and responding to our environment (natural and unnatural). By not being specifically associated with a formal curriculum designed to train artists, Ox-Bow has the luxury of offering courses that push the boundaries of traditional academia, and can provide the opportunity for students to feel free from worries that might bind them in how they create and the types of work that result.
Ox-Bow offers a number of scholarships to attend classes and 15-week paid fellowships for students. To learn more about Ox-Bow courses and financial aid, visit www.ox-bow.org.