Peck School of the Arts ++ Visual Art Lectures

Artists Now! is a Wednesday evening lecture series designed for a broad audience with an interest in contemporary visual art. The series presents a diverse group of artists working across traditional, hybrid and emergent disciplines. Join these nationally and internationally recognized practitioners as they explore and expand the boundaries of creative visual practice today.

All lectures take place on Wednesdays at 7 pm in the Arts Center Lecture Hall, 2400 E. Kenwood Blvd. on the UWM campus. The lectures are free and open to the public.

Artists Now! launches its fall 2009 series with a talk by Roy Staab in conjunction with his current exhibition at Inova, Roy Staab: Four Seasons/Four Corners (through September 27). Two metalsmiths, Kim Cridler and Andy Cooperman, whose demonstrations will also be open to the public, will speak this fall, as will sculptor Nathalie Miebach, whose work translates meteorological data into sculpture and, increasingly, other forms. In an on-going sequence of paintings and works on paper, begun in 1991, Julia Fish has worked in reference to the architectural space of her Chicago home and studio. During this time she has also realized several site-specific projects that engage architectural and /or natural systems and structures. Marc Fischer of Temporary Services will discuss his collaborative projects, and two collaborative teams, winners of Nohl Fellowships in 2008, will discuss their work: Shana McCaw & Brent Budsberg, and Bobbie Ciraldo & Andrew Swant. Their work will be on view at Inova beginning October 9.

Artists Now! is supported in part by the Frederick R. Layton Fund, the John Colt Memorial Art Fund, Object, and Inova.

September 09, 2009 - top
Roy Staab Geometry, Mind, Nature, Art
West Allis, WI

Roy Staab, a Milwaukee artist who makes ephemeral outdoor sculpture in locations throughout the world and the subject of a retrospective at Inova, will launch the fall Artists Now! series with a talk on three decades of making temporary geometric earthworks. An alumnus of UWM, Staab will link his education--"art education let me question and opened the door to experiment and experiences"-to his development as an artist-"I found the freedom to make art my way and choose or reject traditional techniques as a means to create visual experiences that excite me." Staab uses nature, geometry and physical science to make works that he considers a meditation on perception and being.

About Roy Staab
Roy Staab trained at the Layton School of Art and UWM (BFA 1969). He spent many years in Paris and New York before returning to live in West Allis in 1994. Staab began making site-specific installations in 1979, and by 1983 he had shifted to working entirely in nature, employing natural materials from each site. Staab has received commissions to create these environmental site installations in Denmark, Canada, Japan, Brazil, South Korea and Italy as well as in many locations in the United States. He has received various awards including a Japan/American Artist Exchange Creative Artist Fellowship, Pollock/Krasner Grant, and a Joan Mitchell Foundation award. His paintings, drawings and photographs can be found in the collections of the Musée d'art moderne and Le fonds national d'art contemporain in Paris, the Metropolitan Museum of Art (NY), and the Milwaukee Art Museum.

September 23, 2009 - top
Kim Cridler Beauty and its Pursuit - the aesthetics of pleasure
Mazomanie, WI

Metalsmith Kim Cridler explores the recent use of ornamentation in works that exploit its formal and conceptual potential. She will examine makers in a variety of craft disciplines and the recent resurgence in ornament due to technological processes in design fields. The use of ornamentation to enrich objects and environments is as old as humankind, yet, as James Trilling writes in The Language of Ornament, for most of the twentieth century-in the wake of modernism-- it has been excluded from mainstream Western art-making and appreciation. As a practitioner of craft, accountable for the aesthetics of pleasure, invested in process and the labor it requires, and inclined towards humanistic concerns, Cridler proposes that the decorative can inspire and restore. During her mini-residency, sponsored by Object, the student jewelry/metalsmithing organization, she will offer a Welding and Steel Soldering Demonstration and a critique for students.

About Kim Crindler
Trained as a metalsmith, Cridler creates works that utilize the history, making, and meaning of craft and domestic ornamentation. She is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Art at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. An undergraduate at the University of Michigan, Cridler earned an MFA in Metals from the State University of New York at New Paltz, and studied at Skowhegan School of Sculpture and Painting. She has taught in art programs across the country including University of Michigan, San Diego State University, Arizona State University, and Penland School of Crafts. Awards include Visual Arts Fellowships from the Wisconsin Arts Board and the Arizona Commission on the Arts. Her work is featured in collections of the Arizona State University Art Museum, the Arkansas Art Center Decorative Museum of Art, the California State University Long Beach Art Museum, the John Michael Kohler Art Center, the Phoenix Office of Arts and Culture, the Scottsdale Contemporary Museum of Art, the Samuel Dorsky Museum at SUNY New Paltz.

September 30, 2009 - top
Marc Fischer Temporary Services and Public Collectors
Chicago, IL

Marc Fischer, a member of the group Temporary Services, will discuss their collaborative projects, such as Prisoners' Inventions, and their history of self publishing. He will also present Public Collectors, his most recent initiative. Public Collectors encourages individuals to act as their own museum directors or reference librarians and make their personal collections available to the public online and in person.

About Marc Fischer
Marc Fischer is a member of the long-running Illinois-based group Temporary Services. Since 1998, Temporary Services has produced 85 publications and organized or participated in dozens of exhibitions, projects, and events. Temporary Services' projects include Prisoners' Inventions (an ongoing collaboration with an incarcerated artist named Angelo that resulted in a book and a full-size recreation of Angelo's cell that was created from blueprints sent through the mail) and The Library Project (2001) where the group surreptitiously added 100 artist books into the holdings of the main Chicago library branch. In 2003 Temporary Services co-founded Mess Hall, an experimental cultural center in the Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago. Though the group is no longer immediately involved, Mess Hall continues to thrive under the leadership of an ever-changing group of 'keyholders.' In 2008 Temporary Services created it's own publishing imprint and web store named Half Letter Press and released the book Public Phenomena , focusing on photo documentation of informal modifications that people make to shared city spaces, usually without permission.

In 2007 Fischer launched the participatory initiative Public Collectors. Public Collectors consists of informal agreements where collectors allow the contents of their collection to be published and permit those who are curious to directly experience the objects in person so that knowledge, ideas and expertise can be freely shared and exchanged. The Public Collectors website also hosts a number of downloadable PDFs and other digital content.

Websites:
www.temporaryservices.org
www.halfletterpress.com
www.publiccollectors.org

October 07, 2009 - top
Andy Cooperman Flux
Seattle, WA

Metalsmith, writer, and teacher Andy Cooperman discusses his work, career and life as an artist and maker. During his mini-residency, sponsored by Object, the student jewelry/metalsmithing organization, he will discuss and demonstrate alternative strategies for incorporating stones, enamels and objects; and he will demonstrate flex shaft methods.

"I have considered myself a metalsmith since 1980. It was in the late 70's, as an English major in college, that I first encountered the field-outside of the jewelry and hollowware that I had seen in shops and stores. There was a class room in the art building (I spent a lot of time in the art building) that seemed to hold some sort of focused excitement for those who were working inside. There was fire and small, strangely specific tools. The ringing of hammers, I think, was the sound that forced me to open the doors. The fact that metal could be sawn, formed and-especially-forged in a relatively non-industrial place came as a surprise to me. And when I saw that it could be approached in ways that made it look unlike metal, that small almost animate things could be made with it, I was hooked. With a second major in Studio Art, I built a small back bedroom studio, spent some time exploring the very similar field of dental crown and bridge manufacture and worked at the bench in several jewelry stores. In 1984, I followed my wife Kim to Seattle, Washington. We have been here ever since."

About Andy Cooperman

Andy Cooperman lives in Seattle, WA. His work is featured in galleries nationwide and can be found in the permanent collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, Tacoma Art Museum and Central College, Pella, Iowa as well as many private collections. Cooperman has been a recipient of a WESTAF/NEA Fellowship and teaches seminars, workshops and classes around the country; he was a visiting lecturer at the University of Washington. In addition to creating one of a kind jewelry pieces, Cooperman works with clients as a custom jeweler and commission metalsmith. Exhibitions include The Art Of Gold, Metalsmiths Linking, Chess, Metalisms , West Meets West and , most recently, Animates, Portals and Hymenoptera (selected pieces from three bodies of work exhibited at the Tacoma Art Museum, Tacoma Washington). Images of his work have appeared in the books Art Jewelry Today (I & II), 1000 Rings, 500 Brooches, The Craft Of Silversmithing, The Penland Book of Jewelry and Fundamentals of Metalsmithing. More information: http://www.coopermanjewelry.com/

October 21, 2009 - top
Julia Fish [ home ] work : images in context
Chicago, IL

Artist / painter Julia Fish will present and discuss an overview of studio and site-specific projects, in addition to examples of historical and contemporary art and architecture that have been influential in the development of her work. Julia Fish is a Professor of Studio Art in UIC's School of Art and Design, College of Architecture and the Arts. Her work is represented by Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago.

About Julia Fish cooperman

Julia Fish was born in Oregon and has lived and worked in Chicago since 1985. She received the BFA degree from Pacific Northwest College of Art in 1976, and MFA degree from the Maryland Institute, College of Art in 1982. Her paintings and drawings have been included in curated exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Chicago Cultural Center; the MAK Center for Art and Architecture / Schindler House, Los Angeles; and the Martin-Gropius Bau, Berlinische Galerie, Berlin, among many others. Her work has been presented in twenty-one solo exhibitions since 1980, and was the subject of a ten-year survey exhibition at The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago in 1996.

Fish received a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award in 1991, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Painting in 1993, the Cal Arts / Alpert Ucross Residency Prize in 2001, and the 2006 Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Award; she has also been granted research and travel awards from the University of Illinois at Chicago where she is professor of studio arts in the School of Art and Design, College of Architecture and the Arts. Her work is in the permanent collections of The Art Institute of Chicago, The Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, The Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago, and the Illinois State Museum, Springfield, in addition to other public and private collections.

October 28, 2009 - top
Bobby Ciraldo & Andrew Swant Special Entertainment
Milwaukee, WI

Bobby Ciraldo & Andrew Swant, joint recipients of the Greater Milwaukee Foundation's Mary L. Nohl Fund Fellowships (2008) in the emerging category, share their thoughts about film and new media, distribution possibilities, and publicity, and offer advice about how to navigate the entertainment industry without having to move to Los Angeles. For information on the concurrent Nohl Fellowship exhibition see: arts.uwm.edu/inova. Ciraldo and Swant will screen an excerpt from their work-in-progress, Hamlet A.D.D. on November 18 in the UWM Union Theatre.

About Bobby Ciraldo & Andrew Swant

Special Entertainment is an award-winning production partnership between Bobby Ciraldo & Andrew Swant. Current feature-length projects include a documentary starring William Shatner called William Shatner's Gonzo Ballet, a sci-fi comedy called Hamlet A.D.D., and Frankie Latina's critically acclaimed MODUS OPERANDI. Past titles include the YouTube smash hit What What (In the Butt) which has been featured on South Park and downloaded over 23 million times, and a music video for Leslie & The Lys called Zombie Killer featuring guest vocals by Elvira.

November 04, 2009 - top
Nathalie Miebach Weaving Science Into Sculpture
Boston, MA

Nathalie Miebach's work focuses on the intersection of art and science and the visual articulation of scientific observations. Using the methodologies and processes of both disciplines, she translates scientific data related to ecology, climate change and meteorology into brightly-colored, three-dimensional woven structures. Central to this work is her desire to explore the role visual aesthetics play in the translation and understanding of scientific information. By utilizing artistic processes and everyday materials, she is questioning and expanding the traditional boundaries through which science data has been visually translated (ex: graphs, diagrams), while at the same time provoking expectations of what kind of visual vocabulary is considered to be in the domain of 'science' or 'art.' By staying true to the numbers, these woven pieces function both as sculptures in space as well as instruments that could be used in the actual environment from which the data originates. Miebach will discuss Recording and Translating Climate Change, a project she began in 2006 that focuses on the interpretation of weather data through woven sculptures. The latest development in this project includes a more collaborative approach in data translation. Using urban weather data, Miebach has been translating weather data into musical scores, which musicians then interpret as musical compositions. Miebach interprets the scores into sculptures, which can then be played by musicians.

About Nathalie Miebach warp

Nathalie Miebach holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Political Science from Oberlin College, OH, and both a Master of Art Education and Master of Fine Arts from Massachusetts College of Art, MA. She is the recipient of the International Sculpture 2006 Outstanding Student Award, a LEF grant, two year fellowship at the Fine Arts Work Center, a Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts Residency in Omaha, NE, and the Berwick Research Institute Residency in Boston, MA. She is currently the Artist in Residence at Amherst College in Amherst, MA. Her work has been shown nationally and has been reviewed in Art In America and Sculpture Magazine. Current and upcoming show highlights include the Spencer Art Museum (Kansas City, KA), Museum of Science (Boston, MA), Amherst College (Amherst, MA), Reeves Contemporary Gallery (New York, NY), Skidmore College (Saratoga, NY), and the Fuller Craft Museum (Brockton, MA). She is represented by the Nielsen Gallery in Boston, MA and the Reeves Contemporary Gallery in New York City, NY. More information: http://www.nathaliemiebach.com

November 11, 2009 - top
Shana McCaw & Brent Budsberg Smallification (Undermining Preciousness
Milwaukee, WI

Shana McCaw and Brent Budsberg, joint recipients of the Greater Milwaukee Foundation's Mary L. Nohl Fund Individual Artist Fellowship(2008) in the established category, discuss their use of small scale architectural forms in their site-specific installations and how miniature representations affect us psychologically and perceptually. For information on the concurrent Nohl Fellowship exhibition: arts.uwm.edu/inova.

About Shana McCaw and Brent Budsberg warp

Shana McCaw and Brent Budsberg have collaborated for the past eight years constructing site-specific sculptural installations and performances. Their recent work focuses on realistic architectural miniatures utilizing narrative and mood to transform a site. Both are also founding members of the WhiteBoxPainters, a performance art group specializing in public projects. McCaw received a MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, MI in 1999. She currently teaches at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design and Cardinal Stritch University. Budsberg earned a BFA from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 2000. He is a 3-D Lab Supervisor at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, a finish carpenter, a musician, and has also built numerous set pieces for the theatre/film industry. Recent exhibitions include Descendant, a solo exhibition at the Wright Museum of Art in Beloit, WI, Current Tendencies: Ten Artists from Wisconsin, at the Haggerty Museum of Art in Milwaukee, WI, Escapisms at Galerie Sans Nom in Moncton, NB, Canada, Leading Edge at NML Gallery, Cardinal Stritch University, in Milwaukee, WI, Broken Down at The Soap Factory in Minneapolis, MN, and New Work/Emerging Artists at Inova at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. They will also be featured in a solo exhibition in August 2010 at the James Watrous Gallery at the Wisconsin Academy of Arts and Letters in Madison, WI.

February 04, 2009 - top
Michael Rakowitz Three Projects
Chicago and New York City

Michael Rakowitz will discuss three of his projects: Return, in which he resurrected his Iraqi grandfather's import-export business to import Iraqi dates to the US, the first such shipment in more than 25 years; The Invisible Enemy Should Not Exist, the artist's attempt to reconstruct the archeological artifacts looted from the National Museum of Iraq in April 2003; and paraSITE, in which Rakowitz used the exterior ventilation systems of existing architectural structures to create a temporary homeless shelter. Rakowitz will unpack the works' common process while plotting their components. He will describe each project's trajectory, beginning with the observations from which it stems to the ongoing nature of its dialogue with the public.

About Michael Rakowitz
Michael Rakowitz (b. 1973, New York) is an artist based in Chicago and New York City. His work has appeared in venues worldwide including P.S.1, MoMA, MassMOCA, Castello di Rivoli, the 16^th Biennale of Sydney, the 10th Istanbul Biennial, Sharjah Biennial 8, Tirana Biennale, National Design Triennial at the Cooper-Hewitt, and Transmediale 05. He has had solo exhibitions at Lombard-Freid Projects (NY), Alberto Peola Arte Contemporanea (Torino), and Stadtturmgalerie/Kunstraum Innsbruck. His public project, Return, was presented by Creative Time in New York. He is the recipient of a 2008 Creative Capital Grant for Dark Turquoise, a collaboration with artist Emna Zghal; a Sharjah Biennial Jury Award; a 2006 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship Grant in Architecture and Environmental Structures; the 2003 Dena Foundation Award, and the 2002 Design 21 Grand Prix from UNESCO. Rakowitz is an associate professor in art theory and practice at Northwestern University and a contributing editor for Surface Tension: A Journal on Spatial Arts.

Febuary 11, 2009 - top
Terry Barrett Art and Meanings
Columbus, Ohio
Podcast

Terry Barrett discusses contemporary works of art and how we can construct multiple interpretations that are personally and communally meaningful.

About Dr. Terry Barrett
Dr. Terry Barrett, professor of art education at The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, teaches courses in photography criticism, art criticism, and the teaching of criticism and aesthetics. He is especially concerned with interpretation and multiple meanings of images, both social meanings and personal meanings. He believes that honest dialogue about images can further understanding and appreciation of the complexities of life, people, oneself, and ultimately contribute to world peace. His books include Criticizing Photographs, Criticizing Art, Interpreting Art, Talking About Student Art, and most recently, Why Is That Art?: Aesthetics and Criticism of Contemporary Art.

February 18, 2009 - top
Antonio Martorell Fear, Art and Freedom
Puerto Rico
Podcast

Antonio Martorell offers a talk in conjunction with his exhibition at the United Community Center, which opens February 20 and continues through March 20, 2009.

About Antonio Martorell
Mortorell Antonio Martorell (b. 1939) is a painter, book designer, set designer, and installation artist. His work has been exhibited at Puerto Rico's Institute of Culture, the Ponce Art Museum as well as the National Gallery of San Salvador, El Museo de Arte Moderno de México, and the Whitney Museum. Currently he is the Resident Artist at the University of Puerto Rico, Cayey, where he also directs the Museum Ramon Frade. Martorell has written books such as La Piel de la Memoria (The Skin of Memory), and El Libro Dibujado (The Drawn Book) and currently writes a monthly column for the cultural supplement of the Puerto Rican newspaper, El Vocero. He was recently a Wilbur Marvin Fellow at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University. Martorell's Milwaukee visit is sponsored by several units at UWM, including the Chancellor's Office, the Peck School of the Arts and the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies; the United Community Center's Latino Arts program, and Carroll University.

March 04, 2009 - top
Glenn Adamson Craft as Memory Work
London, England
Podcast

Glenn Adamson's book, Thinking Through Craft, proposed new ways of approaching the subjects of process and materials in the arts. In this lecture, he considers the way that craft operates in the broader cultural landscape, not necessarily within the preserve of the museum or gallery. In particular, he will address the way that DIY activities currently popular as a form of activism relate to earlier moments in craft history. Today, as often before, hand work is a means of manifesting collective memory.

About Glenn Adamson
Dr. Glenn Adamson is Head of Graduate Studies and Deputy Head of Research at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. In that capacity, he teaches on the History of Design graduate course run collaboratively with the Royal College of Art. His research ranges from modern craft and industrial design to English and American decorative arts during the 17th and 18th centuries. He is the author of Industrial Strength Design: How Brooks Stevens Shaped Your World (Milwaukee Art Museum/MIT Press). Dr. Adamson's monograph Thinking Through Craft (V&A Publications/Berg Publishers) was published in October 2007. He also co-edits the new Journal of Modern Craft (Berg Publishers) with Tanya Harrod and Edward S. Cooke, Jr.

March 11, 2009 - top
Howard Risatti A Theory of Craft: Function and Aesthetic Expression
Richmond, Virginia

What is craft? How is it different from fine art or design? In his lecture, Howard Risatti examines these issues by comparing handmade ceramics, glass, metalwork, weaving, and furniture to painting, sculpture, photography, and machine-made design from the Bauhaus to the Memphis Group. He describes craft's unique qualities as functionality combined with an ability to express human values that transcend temporal, spatial, and social boundaries. Today, modern design has taken over from craft the making of functional objects for daily use by employing machines to do work once done by hand. Understanding the aesthetic and social implications of this transformation forces us to see craft, as well as design and fine art, from a new perspective. Without a way of understanding and valuing craft on its own terms, the field languishes aesthetically, judged by fine art criteria that automatically deny art status to craft objects. Craft must articulate a role for itself in contemporary society; otherwise it will be absorbed by fine art or design and its unique approach to understanding the world will be lost. A Theory of Craft is a signal contribution to establishing a craft theory that recognizes, defines, and celebrates the unique blend of function and human aesthetic values embodied in the craft object.

About Howard Risatti
Dr. Howard Risatti is emeritus professor of contemporary art and critical theory in the Department of Art History at Virginia Commonwealth University where he also was chair of the Department of Craft/Material Studies from 2001-05. Before receiving his PhD in art history, he earned BM and MM degrees in music and is ABD in music theory and composition.

His writings on art and craft have appeared in various journals including the Art Journal, Artforum, New Art Examiner, Artscribe, Latin American Art, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Woman's Art Journal, Art Criticism, The Studio Potter, Sculpture Magazine, and Ceramic Art & Perception. Recently he wrote on Jackie Matisse's "Collaborations in Art and Science" for Sculpture Magazine, on "Contemporary American Ceramic Trends" for Korean Ceramics Monthly, and on the ceramic sculpture of Suk-Jin Choi for Ceramics Monthly. His latest critical writings about craft and design appeared in Crafts (the journal of the British Crafts Council) and American Craft. He has presented numerous papers on various subjects including functional crafts at the 2003 Cheongju Craft Biennial in Korea; Jackie Matisse's virtual reality kites at the "Art and New Technologies" conference in Chalon sur Soane, France; Leo Steinberg's "Contemporary Art and the Plight of its Public" at the 2005 College Art Conference in Atlanta; and Craft versus Design at the 2005 Society of North American Goldsmiths' conference in Cleveland.

His first book was New Music Vocabulary and appeared in 1975 (University of Illinois Press); Postmodern Perspectives: Issues in Contemporary Art appeared in 1990; the 2^nd edition appeared in 1998 (Prentice Hall). The Mountain Lake Workshops: Artists in Locale (1996, Anderson Gallery & VA Tech Foundation) accompanied the exhibition that he curated of the same title. In 1998 he co-authored with Kenneth Trapp Skilled Work: American Craft in the Renwick Gallery (Smithsonian Institution Press). His latest book, A Theory of Craft: Function and Aesthetic Expression, was published by the University of North Carolina Press in October 2007.

April 01, 2009 - top
Nathaniel Stern Interactions, Interventions and Implications
USA / South Africa
Podcast

Nathaniel Stern (USA / South Africa, born 1977) is an experimental installation and video artist, net.artist, printmaker and writer. He was born and studied in the states, is a permanent resident of South Africa, and currently pursues an art and research PhD at Trinity College, Dublin, whilst an Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee. He's produced and collaborated on projects ranging from interactive and immersive environments, networked art and multimedia physical theatre performances, to digital printing and collage, stone lithography and slam poetry. His talk focuses on the trajectory of his work from video and net.art to interactivity and performance-based printmaking and installation.

Jamie Bennett Nature Obliquely
New Paltz, New York
THIS EVENT CANCELLED

Jeweler Jamie Bennett, one of the most prominent enamellists working today, explores the relationship his work has had to the interpretation of nature as a way of seeing and making. A major retrospective, Edge of the Sublime: Enamels by Jamie Bennett, is on view at the Racine Art Museum, March 22-September 22, 2009.

About Jamie Bennett

Jamie Bennett is a professor of art in the metal program at the State University of New York at New Paltz. He received his BBA from the University of Georgia and his MFA from SUNY at New Paltz, joining the faculty of the Program in Artisanry at Boston University before returningto New Paltz. Bennett has received numerous awards and honors including three National Endowment for the Arts Individual Fellowships, three New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowships and a Massachusetts Council for the Arts Fellowship. He was an artist in residence at Hiko Mizuno College of Jewelry in Tokyo in 2000 and at Istanbul Technical University in 2005.

Bennett's work is the subject of a monograph, Edge of the Sublime, The Enamels of Jamie Bennett, published by Hudson Bay Press, which accompanies a retrospective exhibition of his work traveling to six museums nationally through 2010. Bennett has exhibited and lectured internationally with one person exhibitions at YO Gallery in Tokyo, Japan; Gallerie Gnoss in Gothenburg, Sweden; Sienna Gallery, Lenox, MA; and Tiller and Ernst Gallery in Vienna, Austria. His work is included in major jewelry exhibitions and appears in numerous publications. Jamie Bennett's work is in the permanent collection of over twenty museums around the world, including the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Yale Museum of Art,; Metropolitan Museum, NY, Kundstmuseum, Oslo, Norway; Sameul Dorsky Museum; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Museum of Western Australia; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; Musee des Arts Decoratifs, Paris; Museum of Art and Design, New York; and the National Museum of American Art, Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Institute, Washington, DC.

April 15, 2009 - top
Paul Berger Tile, Quilt, Pixel
Seattle, Washinton
Podcast

Paul Berger talks about the trajectory of his composite and collage works over the course of the last thirty-five years. Beginning with conventional photographic analog processes and spanning the introduction and shift to digital compositing, these works evolve through multiple stages in both subject matter and approach, while consistently focusing on issues of the complications and delights of imagery in structured sets.

About Paul Berger
Paul Berger has been working in the photographic medium since 1965 and in digital electronic media since 1981. He earned a BA degree in art at UCLA in 1970 and completed MFA graduate work at the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, New York, in 1973. He is currently a professor of art at the University of Washington’s School of Art, where he co-founded the photography program in 1978. Although trained in a classical photographic tradition, he has been primarily involved in digital manipulation of electronic images for the past fifteen years, and initiated such study within the photography curriculum beginning in 1985. Berger has exhibited nationally and in Europe, and has received two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. A book version of Seattle Subtext was published in 1984, and a catalog to the Seattle Art Museum exhibition The Machine in the Window was published in 1990. A retrospective exhibition, Paul Berger: 1973-2003, appeared at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in 2003.

September 17, 2008 - top
Michiko Itatani Cosmic Theatre
Chicago, IL
Podcast

Painter/installation artist Michiko Itatani launches the Artists Now! series by talking about her most recent body of work, Cosmic Theater, and her three decades of painting practice.

About Michiko Itatani
Michiko Itatani's work has been seen in more than a hundred solo and group exhibitions nationally and internationally. Her works are in the collection of numerous corporate, public, and private collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; State of Illinois Museum, IL; University of Wyoming Art Museum, WY; Muskegon Museum of Art, Muskegon, MI; Olympic Museum, Switzerland; Musee du Quebec, Canada; Tokoha Museum, Japan; Museu D’art Contemporani Barcelona(MACBA), Spain; Frauen Museum, Germany; Villa-Haiss-Museum, Germany; and National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul. She has received Illinois Arts Council Artist's Fellowships, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a Marie Sharp Walsh New York Studio Grant and a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship. Michiko Itatani is a professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

September 24, 2008 - top
Michele Feder-Nadoff Inside, Outside & Across
Chicago, IL
Podcast

Michelle Feder-Nadoff discusses her experiences as an interdisciplinary artist and creative founder of the Cuentos Foundation, a community-based non-profit dedicated to building intercultural exchange and understanding through local/global artistic collaborations.

About Michele Feder-Nadoff
Michele Feder-Nadoff's installation and time-based works incorporate an unrestricted range of simple to complex materials and processes, from embroidery to lost-wax casting, examining the raw and the cooked, the transforming of matter into meaning. Her work has been exhibited internationally and nationally for over 25 years: at the Phyllis Kind and TOUGH Galleries in Chicago, the Venice Biennial in Italy, ARCO in Spain, and elsewhere. She has been creating sculptural installations indoors and out, temporary and permanent, collaborative and solo, since the mid-eighties, often utilizing water as a tangible physical element and to produce sound. In 2003, Feder-Nadoff created a 2,500 square foot on-site sculptural installation, an homage to the Mexican coppersmithing community of Santa Clara del Cobre, at the Rockford (Illinois) Art Museum for the exhibition, “Art of Containment.” She has been deeply involved with this community since 1997— through apprenticeships and transdisciplinary collaborations—and she has been studying and documenting the village’s traditional metalsmithing craft through a recently published bilingual book, video documentary, and ongoing community exchange programs. Feder-Nadoff is the artistic director and creative founder of the Cuentos Foundation, a community-based organization dedicated to creating and facilitating cross-cultural understanding and exchange through the arts.

www.cuentosfoundation.org

October 1, 2008 - top
Paul McMullan Beneath the Surface: The Ceramic Art of Paul McMullan
Ann Arbor, MI
Podcast

Paul McMullan investigates the making of his current ceramic sculptures and his twenty years as an artist, “a journey that has included experimentation, risk-taking and continuous change.”

About Paul McMullan
Paul McMullan was born in Rochester, New York. He received his M.F.A. from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University in Alfred, New York and his B.F.A. from James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia. Recent exhibitions include “The New Utilitarian,” an NCECA Exhibition at the Hoffman Gallery in Portland, Oregon; “A Tale to Tell” at the John Michael Kohler Center for the Arts in Sheboygan, Wisconsin; and “Snakes in the Grass” at The Clay Studio in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. McMullan has taught at Alfred University and Virginia Commonwealth University and is currently associate professor at Siena Heights University in Adrian, Michigan. He received a McKnight Fellowship from The Northern Clay Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota in 2005.

McMullan’s sculptural forms and art tiles deal with clay as a collage material. He incorporates the use of photo-silkscreen, painting, decals, molds and various handbuilding techniques to achieve an image-packed surface.

October 8, 2008 - top
Nick Cave Adornment Amplified
Chicago, IL
Podcast

Visual/performance artist Nick Cave will address the development and production of his work, covering the territory from sculpture, installation and performance to his relationship with fashion.

About Nick Cave
A graduate of the Kansas City Art Institute and the Cranbrook Academy of Art, Nick Cave joined the School of the Art Institute in 1990 and now serves as chair of the Department of Fashion and Design. Cave designed and marketed his own line of men’s and women’s clothing and ran ROBAVE, a successful retail clothing company, in Chicago for 10 years, selling to 300 retailers nationally and internationally before turning exclusively to his artistic and teaching practice. His work has been exhibited in museums and galleries in the United States and Europe, including the Studio Museum in Harlem, MOCA Jacksonville, Telfair Museum Savannah Georgia, the Mattress Factory, the Art Connexion in Amsterdam and the Zachata National Gallery of Art in Warsaw, Poland. Cave has been invited to residency programs around the world. He is represented by Jack Shainman Gallery in New York. He has received several prestigious grants and awards, including a Louis Comfort Foundation grant, a USA Artist Grant, a Creative Capital Grant, the Joyce Award, the Richard Driehaus Foundation Award, grants from the Illinois Art Council grants and, most recently, the N’DIGO Award. Cave has been featured in such publications as Art News, Art in America, Sculpture and The New York Times.

In his clothing and figurative sculptures, collages, installations and performances, Cave explores the use of textiles and clothing as conceptual modes of expression. His SOUNDSUITS are full-body sculptures that recall ethnographic dress. They are composed of ephemeral materials such as twigs, dryer lint, bottle caps and recycled garments, and are designed to rattle and resonate with the body movements of the wearer. Combining Western culture and ceremonial ritual, they are catalysts for contemplating the condition of the black male in contemporary society. Whether displayed as sculptural forms in museums and galleries or worn as ceremonial garments in performances and video, Cave’s intricate constructions pose fundamental questions about the human conditions in the social and political world.

October 22, 2008 - top
Faythe Levine Crafting Your Life: Constructing a Creative DIY Community
Milwaukee, WI
Podcast

Artist and organizer Faythe Levine, a 2007 recipient of the Greater Milwaukee Foundation’s Mary L. Nohl Fund Individual Artist Fellowship, talks about craft, activism and community--from your home, to the gallery, and into the street. Levine will examine local and national Do-It-Yourself movements, consider the role of DIY in arts-based initiatives, and engage you in a discussion of alternative ways to structure your life, create community and use your creative skills for personal exploration or direct action.

About Faythe Levine

Faythe Levine is an artist and organizer based out of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She is currently finishing her first documentary film, Handmade Nation: The Rise of DIY Art, Craft and Design, which is due to premier in 2009. She is the co-author of a book of the same title published by Princeton Architectural Press that will be released in November 2008. Faythe is the founder and coordinator of Art vs. Craft, co-owner of brick and mortar space Paper Boat Boutique & Gallery, and does freelance curating and design work. She also plays the musical saw in the experimental musical group Wooden Robot. Her work has been reviewed in The New York Times, Utne Reader, Venus Magazine, Paper Magazine, and American Craft Magazine.

Growing up in Seattle during the 1990s, Levine was exposed firsthand to many punk bands and the riot grrrl scene. This underground community quickly introduced her to DIY ethics, and she learned early on that you could release, self-publish and distribute your music and zines through a vast nationwide network of like-minded people. In 2003, she found herself looking at an emerging movement that embraced both art and community, a community that can now be defined loosely as "the new wave of craft." This movement is exploring the uncertainty of where fine art meets craft, redefining and reclaiming creativity. The new wave of craft is influenced by the history and techniques of traditional handiwork, modern aesthetics, politics, feminism and art.

November 5, 2008 - top
Gary John Gresl Synthesis of Four Dimensions: Objects, Collecting, Creating
Brown Deer, WI
Podcast

Gary John Gresl, a 2007 recipient of the Greater Milwaukee Foundation’s Mary L. Nohl Fund Individual Artist Fellowship, talks about found or selected objects utilized in assemblage sculptures, and in particular the evolution, collecting and use of these materials in his work.

From childhood to death, real 3D objects are our road to an understanding of the material world, life, spirituality, and perhaps our demise. While we experience our relationships with other living things, the inanimate and formerly animate objects are with us throughout our lives for study and utilization, a necessary means to support our brief existence. From the organic biological and mineral realms to the products of ancient human and contemporary pop cultures, we interact with these objects, witnessing them and our selves evolve...all eventually disappearing.

They are collectibles. They are records. They are vitally important and they are junk. They are shapes and textures that can interact with us and with one another. They are metaphors and nutriments for creative acts.

About Gary John Gresl
Gary John Gresl was born in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, in 1943, currently lives in Brown Deer, and is the oldest person to receive a Nohl Fellowship. He has lived his entire life in Wisconsin, though he has traveled both inside and outside of the United States. He has been an inveterate collector of many things during his lifetime, ranging from coins, rocks and minerals, Orientalia, comic books, art glass, books, ad infinitum...to the art of other Wisconsin artists, in particular sculpture.

He attended a small teacher's college in the early ‘60s, completing his bachelor's degree with a music minor at UW Steven's Point, where he also took art and art history classes. After teaching in the Brillion Public School system for five years, serving as principal in a small middle school, he went on to complete a master’s degree from the Related Art Department of the School of Family Resources(now the School of Human Ecology), University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Gresl then worked for about 35 years in the antiques and collectibles trade serving as an owner and manager of the Milwaukee Antique Center. Around 1984 he turned attention to his own art production, becoming involved in Wisconsin Painters & Sculptors, serving often on its board and as its president for four terms. It was during this period that Gresl became more interested in the history of Wisconsin art, an interest that coincided with the discovery that real objects, as opposed to 2D materials, were a dominant factor in his own production of sculpture.

It was in the early 2000s that Gresl conceived of an organization he called the Wisconsin Visual Art Hall of Fame. This eventually became known as the Wisconsin Visual Art Lifetime Achievement Awards, associated with the Museum of Wisconsin Art and the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters. Gresl has served as co-chair of the WVALAA and is a member of its nominating committee. He continues to deal in antiques and collectibles and is actively continuing his explorations with assemblage sculpture.

November 12, 2008 - top
Mads Lynnerup You Are the Artist, You Figure It Out
New York, NY

Video artist and sculptor Mads Lynnerup will present his latest work; talk about his process, inspiration and art practice; and discuss his influences and his interest in artwork that responds to its immediate audience and environment.

Mads Lynnerup's work is featured in stop. look. listen: an exhibition of video works at the Haggerty Museum of Art-Marquette University, October 23, 2008 – February 22, 2009. http://www.marquette.edu/haggerty/

About Mads Lynnerup
Currently living in New York City, Mads Lynnerup is an artist working in various forms of media from "Shish Kebab" meat and cardboard to installations using video and performance. Taking his inspiration from everyday life, his work comments and draws attention to situations that might otherwise get overlooked in the day to day. Lynnerup's work is site-specific and addresses a diverse selection of circumstances, which often make the outcome of his work manifest itself differently from project to project.
www.madslynnerup.com

November 19, 2008 - top
Dianna Frid After the Invention of Clouds
Chicago, IL

Mixed media and installation artist Dianna Frid's works are material responses to existing images, nomenclature systems, impressions, and things in the world. Her work alludes to the dual thoroughness and elusiveness of sensuality, to the agency and pleasure of thing-making, and to the irreducibility of art.

About Dianna Frid
Dianna Frid was born in Mexico City and immigrated to Vancouver, Canada as a teenager. She received her M.F.A. from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2003 and is currently assistant professor in Studio Arts in the School of Art and Design at the University of Illinois in Chicago.

Frid has been the recipient of various grants and awards including the Canada Council for the Arts (most recently a travel Award in 2008) and an Artadia Award (2004). She has exhibited her work in the United States, Canada, Mexico and Belgium. Recent projects include P.S.1-MOMA (2005), the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago (2006); Croxhapox in Gent, Belgium (2006), and devening projects + editions in Chicago (2008). Her work was recently on view at the Drawing Center’s Selections - Spring 2008 exhibition in New York. Frid is preparing for a large site-specific project to take place at the Neue Kunstforum in Cologne, Germany (2010)

December 3, 2008 - top
Betsy Damon Art, Ecology and Social Change
New York, NY
Podcast

Practical visionary Betsy Damon is an award-winning artist/ecologist who has spent the past 30 years pioneering a collaborative form of ecological art resulting in large-scale functional works that inspire, motivate and educate. Since 1985 the focus and passion of her work has been water. She believes that since water is the foundation of living systems, it must be the foundation of sustainable design and planning.

About Betsy Damon
Betsy Damon is an internationally known, award winning artist/ecologist who has spent the past 30 years pioneering a collaborative form of ecological art resulting in large-scale functional works that inspire, motivate, and educate. Since 1985 the focus and passion of her work has been water. She believes that since water is the foundation of living systems, that it must be the foundation of sustainable design and planning.

In 1995, she conceptualized the Living Water Garden in Chengdu, Sichuan, China while directing Chengdu's first environmental public event. From 1996–1998 she directed a Chinese and US team in designing the six-acre bio-remediation park, which is now a worldwide model for urban ecological solutions. She continues to work on large-scale innovative projects in China and the US, such as an award-winning plan for Beijing Olympic Park. From 2002–2005, she directed projects for the Beijing planning bureau, three of which won awards. Damon has inspired such community efforts as Portland Urban Water Works, The Edwards Aquifer National Park in San Antonio, Texas—the first and only aquifer park in the US—and CURA, Chengdu Urban Rivers Association, which developed a model village project in Ping Yi county, Sichuan to clean upstream watersheds. Among her current commissions is the Trinity Lakes project in Dallas, Texas, which is a plan to create a 23-mile long, ecologically sound corridor on the Trinity River. Damon is the recipient of numerous grants, among them the Bush Individual Artist Grant, and was most recently nominated for the Swedish Water Prize.