Visiting Artists – Archive
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.