Amy Hauft Lecture – today 9/10

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Photo credit: Jack Risley

September 10, 2009
Amy Hauft
Richmond Center for Visual Arts, room 2008
5:30 p.m.

Amy Hauft grew up in Southern California, earning her Bachelors in Art from the University of California Santa Cruz. From there, she attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture on scholarship, and subsequently earned her Masters of Fine Art at the Art Institute of Chicago. She then moved to New York City. Hauft has exhibited her large-scale architectural installations in museums and galleries world-wide including the Brooklyn Museum, the New Museum, the International Artists Museum (Poland), The American Academy in Rome, PS1 Museum, Wesleyan University Gallery, USC Atelier Gallery, School of the Art Institute of Chicago Galleryaaa, Sculpture Center, etc. She has been the recipient of numerous significant grants including the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship (twice), the St. Gaudens Foundation Fellowship, PEW Foundation Philadelphia Exhibition Initiatives, the Howard Foundation Fellowship and a Public Art Fund Grant. She has been awarded residencies that have allowed her to work in different parts of the world including the Civitella Ranieri Foundation Fellowship in Umbria, Italy and the International Artists Residency Fellowship in Poland. Ms. Hauft taught for many years at the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia, moving from Assistant to Full Professor. She taught for one year on the school’s Rome campus. She was recently selected to Chair the Sculpture Department at Virginia Comonwealth University.

Exhibition on View:
September 10 – October 09, 2009
Amy Hauft: Counter Re-Formation
Don Desmett, curator

Annual Gwen Frostic School of Art Student Exhibition

Lecture: Thursday, March 26
RCVA #2008, 5:30 PM


Don Harvey

This year’s juror is the artist Don Harvey. Harvey has lived and worked in Cleveland Ohio for the last 25 years, where he has produced gallery works in various media, from industrial materials to digital images. He is also well known for his public art commissions and work with Cleveland’s Committee for Public Art agency, an organization he co-founded in the early 1980’s.

Harvey has had numerous one person and group exhibitions, including a recent exhibition at William Busta Gallery in Cleveland, and Don Harvey, Invented Landscapes at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland. Group shows include Artists and the Art of the Book and One of a Kind Artists Books, both shows that traveled throughout the United States and South America. Harvey taught at the Meyers School of Art, the University of Akron from 1973-2000, and is now a Visiting Professor of Art at Oberlin College, in Ohio.

Albertine Monroe Brown Gallery
April 2-16, 2009

Christine Carr Lecture – 3/23

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Color as Perception: Space, Light and Intuition
Visiting Artist Christine Carr

Monday, March 23rd.
3:30-4:30 pm
RCVA Room #1004 (FIRST FLOOR)

Visiting Artist Christine Carr will be here to speak about Color and her photo work with it.

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Hailing from Portsmouth, Virginia, Christine Carr received degrees from the Corcoran College of Art and Design and the Tyler School of Art. Her work has been included in the 4th edition of Exploring Color Photography and in the 3rd edition of Photographic Possibilities, both by Robert Hirsch. She is two-time recipient of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Fellowship, and has recently lectured on contemporary landscape photography at the Taubman Museum of Art. She has exhibited in solo shows in Washington, DC, Richmond, VA and Roanoke, VA, and in numerous group shows. Carr is currently teaching photography at Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia.

Dr. Vandana Shiva Lecture

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KALAMAZOO–Eco-feminist and conservationist Dr. Vandana Shiva will speak at 7 p.m. Thursday, March 12, in ther Bernhard Center Ballroom as part of the 2009 Whitney Young Scholars Award Celebration at Western Michigan University. Admission is free for students and $5 for all others.

The annual event memorializes renowned social activist and civil rights leader Whitney M. Young Jr. and also honors WMU School of Social Work students who fit the ideals Young represented.

Shiva, a physicist, environmental activist and author, is respected in her native India and throughout the world as an expert in sustainability, especially in the areas of food and water. Her activism started in the 1970s when she joined the nonviolent Chipko movement, a group of women in the Himalayas who protected forests by hugging trees.

Since then, she has authored several publications, received numerous honors and awards, and established the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology and Navdanya, a movement to protect nature and people’s rights to knowledge, biodiversity, water and food.

Her stop at WMU will be one of only five such engagements on her U.S. speaking tour and is co-sponsored by the WMU School of Social Work, the Kalamazoo Peace Center, the Alliance for Socioeconomic Justice and the WMU Division of Minority Affairs, with primary funding from the WMU Student Activity Fund.

Students to be honored at the celebration are Sasha Acker and Allen Hearn, who will be awarded a certificate and monetary stipend as this year’s Whitney Young Scholarship recipients. They were recommended and evaluated by a committee of faculty and staff and selected based on their scholarship, community service, awards and recognitions, and leadership roles related to a social justice program, event or project. For more information, contact Dr. Donald Cooney, WMU associate professor of social work, at (269) 387-3190 or donald.cooney@wmich.edu.

http://www.navdanya.org

Suupa Pop: Contemporary Japanese Package Design

Jeremy Dawkins
Lecture: Thursday, February 19
RCVA #2008, 5:30 pm

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Jeremy brings our clients’ brands to life – connecting them to audiences as simply and as powerfully as possible. He creates ideas that are innovative, useful, aesthetic, and consequent to the last detail. Jeremy has a deep understanding of the many facets of corporate and consumer branding: identity, environments, film and digital media, industrial design and consumer packaging.

As executive creative director of FutureBrand North America Jeremy’s role was to visually articulate clients’ business and brand strategy, their values and beliefs, through smart, provocative and sustainable design. Clients included Carrabba’s, Intel, Interna tional Rescue Committee, Microsoft, Sprite, and YBCA. Jeremy’s expertise in strategy and brand identity is built on 17 years of experience. Previously, he spent 10 years at Landor Associates as Creative Director of New York and Seattle. Clients there included Bath and Body Works, Delta Airlines, Diageo, Japan Airlines, Microsoft, Organized Living, Panasonic, Pepsi, and Proctor & Gamble. Before coming to the United States, Jeremy worked in Europe, for Landor, Michael Peters and Coley Porter Bell in London, and for BBDO in Belgium.

SUUPAA Pop: Contemporary Japanese Package Design

This exhibition was organized by AIGA, the professional association for design.
AIGA, the professional association for design, is the oldest and largest membership association for design professionals engaged in the discipline, practice and culture of designing. Its mission is to advance designing as a professional craft, strategic tool and vital cultural force.

AIGA was founded as the American Institute of Graphic Arts in 1914. Since then, it has become the preeminent professional association for communication designers, broadly defined. In the past decade, designers have increasingly been involved in creating value for clients (whether public of business) through applying design thinking to complex problems, even when the outcomes may be more strategic, multidimensional and conceptual than what most would consider traditional communication design.

A selection of examples of unique design, unexpected use of materials, innovative products, beautiful aesthetics and inspiring surprises.

For innovation and inspiration, all roads lead to Tokyo.There is no place where the delightful spirit and imagination of Japanese design is more apparent than in the corner supermarket—or “suupa”, as it is called locally. Here you’ll find the convergence of art and commerce across a dizzying array of categories and SKUs. It is an aesthetic that runs from the cool to the adorable to the ridiculous—often on the same shelf—and has long elicited curiosity as well as perplexed shrugs from the Western world. But while its intent may appear random or irrational to outsiders, Japanese packaging merely operates on its own unique design logic.

In Japanese packaging, we discover the modern expression of ancient philosophic principles—namely, the Confucian adherence to ritual and outward presentation. But the emphasis on outer appearances reflects contemporary economic realities as well. Real estate constraints, especially in Tokyo, yield fierce competition among brands to win floor space in convenience and grocery stores. With the high cost of manufacturing and distribution inflating product prices, there is significant pressure on packaging to not only attract attention, but communicate value, too.

This exhibition was organized by AIGA, the professional association for design.
AIGA, the professional association for design, is the oldest and largest membership association for design professionals engaged in the discipline, practice and culture of designing. Its mission is to advance designing as a professional craft, strategic tool and vital cultural force.

AIGA was founded as the American Institute of Graphic Arts in 1914. Since then, it has become the preeminent professional association for communication designers, broadly defined. In the past decade, designers have increasingly been involved in creating value for clients (whether public of business) through applying design thinking to complex problems, even when the outcomes may be more strategic, multidimensional and conceptual than what most would consider traditional communication design.

Albertine Monroe Brown Gallery
February 19 – March 21, 2009

Larry Fink @ Kalamazoo College

Artist Talk: Larry Fink
Monday, February 16 @ 7:00 p.m.
Recital Hall, Light Center for Fine Arts
Kalamazoo College

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Social photographer and photojournalist Larry Fink began his career documenting the beatniks in the late 1950s. Over the past decades, he has examined American politics, social class, and the worlds of boxing, fashion, and music. His most recent work for Vanity Fair presents his observations on the Obama and Clinton campaign trails.

Fink’s work has been exhibited widely in Europe and the U.S., including solo shows at the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Photographs have appeared in The New York Times, Art in America, Vogue, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker and other publications, including his books, Social Graces, Boxing, Runway, and Somewhere There’s Music.

Larry Fink, 2009 judge of the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts’ West Michigan Area Show, will be in Kalamazoo to award prizes for this exhibition, opening February 28.

John Carson: Timelines 1975-2008

Lecture: Thursday, January 8, 2009
RCVA #2008, 5:30 pm


John Carson

John Carson joined Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh as Head of the School of Art in 2006. He was previously at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London, where he was a principal lecturer in fine art and course director for the bachelor of fine arts program. He was also a lecturer in fine art and photography at the National College of Art & Design in Dublin and a visiting artist and lecturer at various schools and colleges in Britain, Ireland, Europe, the United States, Australia and New Zealand. Carson is an arts consultant for various organizations, including BBC-TV; Public Art Development Trust; Arts Council of England; London Arts; and others. He is an accomplished writer in the field of multimedia art, and his writing has appeared in various catalogues, magazines and books around the world. Carson is also a practicing multimedia artist. He received his bachelor of fine arts from the University of Ulster at Belfast in 1976 and his master’s degree in fine arts at the California Institute of the Arts in 1983.


John Carson
Timelines: 1975-2008
Sophie Thompson, (video detail)

During Carson’s final year at the College of Art and Design in Belfast, he worked on a number of projects that explored geographical and social aspects of the Belfast and Carrickfergus area, where he grew up. This project took Carson out of the art school building and into the streets, the countryside, and peoples’ homes. In Friend Map (1975-77) Carson visited everyone in the area who was a friend or relation, photographed them in their homes and placed the photographs on a map in the appropriate location.

Reflecting on his Friend Map project of 1975-76, Carson realized that none of the people who participated in that work had been given any voice in the work. Consequently he decided to revisit the project some 30 years later and began a series of video interviews with the people from the Friend Map who he had managed to track down again. Carson has asked each of them a set of questions to prompt them to reflect on their lives over the last 30 years and to consider how the reality of their lives today compares to any aspirations they might have had in 1976-77. Carson also hoped to discover how political events in Northern Ireland might have influenced their lives.

Albertine Monroe Brown Gallery
January 8 – February 07, 2009

Cat Crotchett

Thursday, November 20
RCVA #2008, 5:30 pm


Cat Crotchett

Cat Crotchett is a professor of Art at Western Michigan University. She has been a professional artist for over 20 years. Her studio work currently focuses on encaustic painting and oil media on paper. Layers of vibrant colors and textured surfaces are characteristics of her work.

Crotchett has taught painting, drawing and foundations courses at Virginia Commonwealth University, Bowling Green State University and The University of Toledo. She has an extensive exhibition record that includes national solo, invitational and juried exhibitions. She has also been recognized through numerous grants and awards.

Chris Martin

Thursday, October 30, 2008
RCVA #2008, 5:30 pm


Chris Martin. Tiger Preserve, 2006
Oil & Collage on canvas, 58″ x 38″
Credit: Courtesy Daniel Weinberg Gallery, Los Angeles
Photograph: Anthony Cunha Photography

A former performance artist, Chris Martin recently had a solo show at Mitchell Innes & Nash in NY, and was included last year in The Painted World, at P.S. 1 in Long Island City, New York as well as a group show at Feature inc. NY. He is represented by Daniel Weinberg Gallery in Los Angeles, CA and Mitchell Innes & Nash, NYC.

In a recent NY Times review of Martin’s exhibition at Mitchell Innes & Nash, Roberta Smith writes that “… [Martin’s] style might be called ‘80s mongrel; a mélange of outtakes from Julian Schnabel, Keith Haring, Elizabeth Murray and Sigmar Polke.” But his surfaces are so lavishly perfect that he seems a master of controlled chaos.

Gary Koepke

Thursday, September 11, 2008
RCVA #2008 – 5:30 pm

Gary Koepke

Gary Koepke’s graphic design and art direction have impacted global audiences since earning his BFA in Art with concentration in graphic design at WMU. Most recently, in January 2000 Modernista! was founded in Boston, MA, USA by creatives Gary Koepke and Lance Jensen. With additional offices in Amsterdam and Detroit, today the agency has nearly 200 employees from more than 15 different countries. M!’s client roster includes Cadillac, (RED), HUMMER, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Animal Planet, BusinessWeek, TIAA-CREF, Hearts On Fire and Stop Handgun Violence. Modernista! is fiercely independent.

Sadashi Inuzuka – Artist Lecture

February 28, 2008
RCVA Lecture Hall, 2nd Floor
5:30 pm
Sadashi Inuzuka

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Inuzuka has been living in North America for over 25years (Born in Japan). Examining the life lived between two cultures Inuzuka’s installations explore the intersection of human society and the natural world, traditional and non-traditional forms, as well as art and science. The work explores a range of subjects – ecological imbalance, the impact of invasive non-native species, and water consumption and conservation.

Sculptural Concepts: 1962-2007

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Wade Guyton, Untitled

Sculptural Concepts: 1962-2007
Richmond Center
January 10 – February 16, 2008
Lecture by Emily Taub Webb, January 10th, 5:30pm

Sculptural Concepts will focus on an historical survey of three dimensional art practices and revolutionary changes that occurred over the last half of the 20th century and into the 21st. Both Minimalism and the Conceptual artists used the spectator’s intellectual and physical experience with the art to make it more active, generating engagement rather than a passive reading of intention, a fluid effect of transient rather than fixed physical relationships to the work. Artists include: Vito Acconci, Sol LeWitt, Lawrence Weiner, Dan Flavin, Robert Morris, Sherrie Levine, Mel Bochner & Robert Smithson, Ana Mendieta, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, and Wade Guyton.


An exhibition catalog will be available, with text from Dr. Jeffrey Thompson, Assistant Professor of Art History at WMU, and Don Desmett, curator of the exhibition and director of the Richmond Center.

This exhibition will be on exhibit through February 16. A panel discussion, with host Don Desmett, Jeffrey Thompson, and guest historian Emily Taub Webb will be held on January 10, at 5:30 p.m. in the Richmond Center lecture hall, room number 2008.

Don Desmett, Curator

Kate Teale

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Kate Teale
November 15th
Richmond Center Lecture Hall, 2nd Floor
5:30 pm

Kate Teale is an English artist, living in New York. Her work is figurative and informed by a particularly British approach to figuration, in which the physical body is both psychological and fleshy. In “Keeping it Real”, Teale is showing 3 paintings from a series of 14 paintings called “Through the Night”, which depict herself and her husband sleeping through the course of one night.

Kate Teale teaches drawing at Parsons School of Design and Pratt Institute. She has had recent solo exhibitions at Kristen Frederickson Contemporary Art, and First New York Gallery, both located in New York City. Her work can also be seen at Pierogi Gallery, Brooklyn.

Fall 2007 Frostic Reading Series

Monday, Sept. 17, poet William Olsen
Monday, Oct. 1, playwright Rich Orloff
Wednesday, Oct. 10, poet and essayist Lia Purpura
Monday, Oct. 29, novelist Robin Hemley
Wednesday, Nov. 7, poet and essayist Marvin Bell
Wednesday, Nov. 14, novelist Victor LaValle

All readings are at 8 p.m. in the Little Theatre, which is located at the corner of Oakland Drive and Oliver Street on Western Michigan University’s East Campus. There is free off-street parking behind the theatre.

James Yood – 9/6 Richmond Center Lecture Hall

September 6, 2007
Richmond Center Lecture Hall, 2nd Floor
5:30pm

James Yood, Curator of “The Island See: Contemporary Art Around Lake Michigan”

Guest Curator James Yood teaches contemporary art history and criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he is Adjunct Professor in the Department of Art History. Active as an art critic and essayist on contemporary art, he is a Chicago correspondent to Artforum and tema celeste and also writes regularly for GLASS magazine, American Craft, Aperture and Art and Auction. Educated at the University of Wisconsin and at the University of Chicago, he has lectured on issues in modern art at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the Terra Museum of American Art, the St. Louis Art Museum, the Akron Art Museum, the Museum of Art and design in New York, the Columbus Museum of Art, the Boise Art Museum, the Speed Museum in Louisville, the Mint Museum in Charlotte, and many other venues. Among his books are Spirited Visions: Portraits of Chicago Artists, Gladys Nilsson, Second Sight: Printmaking in Chicago 1935-95. He has also served as a panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts.

Wendy Babcox

Artist Talk
Thursday April 19th, 11 am in 2303 Sangren

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Wendy Babcox is a British born multi-media artist whose work examines language and spectacle through a variety of ploys. Babcox resides in Tampa, Florida where she is an Assistant professor of photography at the University of South Florida. She also taught at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Babcox received her MFA from the University of Florida in 2000 and her BFA from the University of Colorado in 1999. She has been awarded numerous teaching and research grants from both the University of South Florida and Western Michigan University.

Babcox has exhibited and performed extensively both nationally and internationally, including the Quay School of Art Gallery (Wanganue, New Zealand), The Kitchen (NY, NY), the Urban Institute of Contemporary Art (Grand Rapids, MI), and the International Center of Bethlehem.

http://www.wendybabcox.com/

April 2007 Exhibits and Artist Talks

April 2-6
RCVA: Graphic Design Group BFA Thesis Exhibition
East Hall Rotunda: Zachary Hemsteger – BFA Ceramics
East Hall South Gallery: Daniel Nunez – BFA Sculpture
Sangren Gallery II: Sara Goodrich – BFA Painting

April 9-13
RCVA: Graphic Design Group BFA Thesis Exhibition
East Hall Rotunda: Katie Cooper – BFA Painting
East Hall South Gallery: Rebecca O’Gorman – BFA Painting
Sangren Gallery II: Kellen Buskirk – Art History Curatorial

April 12
Visiting Artist Lecture Series
Annie Varnot (participating artist in the NEW NY Drawing Exhibition)
5:30 pm
RCVA Lecture Hall, 2nd Fl.

April 12 – May 12
New New York Drawing
Nina Lola Bachhuber, Sean Bluechel, Adam Helms, Frank Magnotta, Yuri Masnyj, Judy Glantzman, Wardell Milan, Dasha Shishkin, Annie Varnot, Toby Kress

April 12 – June, 2007
RCVA: Dick Keaveny – Modern Sins

April 16-20
RCVA: Andrew McNair MFA Thesis Exhibition
RCVA: Patrick Trimbath MFA Thesis Exhibition
East Hall Rotunda: Ceramics BFA Group Show
East Hall South Gallery: Ceramics BFA Group Showg
Sangren Gallery II: Kara Dembowski – non-degree show

April 19
Gallery Talk with Dick Keaveny
5:30 pm
RCVA Netzorg/Kerr Gallery

April 23-27
RCVA: David Ninham MFA Thesis Exhibition
RCVA: Mindi K. Bagnall MFA Thesis Exhibition

3/22 Artist Talks

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Image Credit: Michael Souter
Portrait. Mixed media on paper, 60”x40”
http://www.MichaelSouter.com

On Thursday, March 22, WMU Alumni artists Michael Souter, Tom Lollar, Mary King, and Mary Hatch will meet together to speak about their art, and lives after graduating from WMU. The symposia will be held at the RCVA second floor lecture hall, beginning at 5:30 pm. This event, as with all programs scheduled at the Richmond Center for Visual Arts, is free and open to the public. . It is a great pleasure to invite these amazing artists home to open the Richmond Center for Visual Arts.

The inaugural season at the RCVA will feature three exhibitions that highlight the capabilities of this sophisticated cultural center:

March 9 through April 7 — Distinguished Alumni from WMU’s School of Art (Albertine Monroe-Brown Gallery). Organized by the RCVA Director of Exhibitions, Don Desmett, this will be the first in a series of programs focusing on outstanding alumni. Two of the artists, Michael Souter (’76) and Tom Lollar (’73), are enjoying successful careers in New York. Souter works as a cutting edge designer and Lollar as an artist, teacher, and director of the Lincoln Center/List Collection Print Program. Mary King (’70) lives in Chicago where she paints, prints, and produces wonderfully engaging works of art. Mary Hatch (’70) remains committed to the Kalamazoo community while exhibiting her paintings and prints throughout the United States. She has helped keep the local art scene vibrant with her artwork and support of other artists in the community. It is a great pleasure to invite these amazing artists home to open the Richmond Center for Visual Arts.

Also in the Galleries:

March 9 through March 24 — Annual School of Art Student Exhibition (DeVries Student Gallery). Wardell Milan, a recent graduate of the Yale Art School, is the juror for the exhibition. Mr. Milan will also give a public lecture on his work as well as the process of jurying a student exhibition. Mr. Milan’s talk will be at 5:30 p.m. on February 22 in Sangren Hall, Room 2302.

March 9 to April 7 — Contemporary Prints from the University Art Collection (Netzorg/Kerr Gallery). This exhibition has been organized by School of Art Printmaking faculty member Nichole Maury and highlights eighteen major works from the collection, as well as recent acquisitions.

Dejan Atanackovic 10/20 – 11/2

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WMU School of Art Visiting Artist
News Release

Dejan Atanackovic
Florence, Italy
Studio Arts Centers International (SACI)

October 30 – November 2
Artist-in-Residence
Tuesday, October 31
Slide lecture on his own work
7:00 p.m., Room 2302, Sangren Hall

November 2 – 17
Multimedia Installation
Gallery II, Sangren Hall
Monday – Friday
10:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.

Since 1994, the visual art projects by Dejan Atanackovic – personal work and curatorial projects – have been presented internationally in numerous exhibitions in the form of video installation, music, and public intervention as well as curatorial concepts featuring works of artists, art students and psychiatric patients. His works have been selected for international art festivals in Florence, Milan, Belgrade, Sarajevo, and Quebec City among others. In collaboration with Belgrade’s Center for Cultural Decontamination (CZKd), he developed a public art project entitled Perfect Future (CD-ROM, posters, billboards and gallery installations) produced by the Center and financed by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs (1999-2001).

Since September 2000 Dejar has been teaching multimedia at the US university program Studio Art Centers International (SACI) in Florence, Italy. In 2001 he initiated the Outside, a project of international cultural and didactic exchange, accomplished through seminars and workshops in the field of visual art and culture. Atanackovic is the author of the Outside Project book Letters on the Body: Projects for a Sustainable Sacred, for the publisher Morgana Edizioni, Florence 2003. In collaboration with Oscar Antino, he is also the author of the Outside Project web site. At the competition Premio Web Italia, this web site was awarded Best Design in 2003.

Since June 2003, Atanackovic’s multimedia installation Golem Project has been presented in Belgrade (Belgrade Cultural Center and October Salon), Sarajevo (Winter Festival) and in Florence (La Corte Arte Contemporanea). In 2004 he curated an exhibition entitled Infinity Enclosed, on the theme of memory, death and desire in contemporary Italian art, with works by Robert Gligorov, Luca Matti, Aroldo Marinai, Melania Lanzini and Krista Steinhauer (Belgrade Cultural Center, SACI Gallery). Dejan Atanackovic is currently living and working in Florence and Belgrade.

Charles Garoian 10/16 – 10/19

Charles Garoian

WMU School of Art Visiting Artist
News Release

Charles Garoian
Director, School of Visual Arts and
Professor of Art Education, Pennsylvania State University

October 16 – October 19
Artist-in-Residence in Art Education

Thursday, October 19
Performance: hyper/ventilation
7:00 p.m. Dalton Center Multimedia Room

Charles Garoian comes to Western Michigan University as a noted performance artist and art educator. He is the Director of the School of Visual Arts at Pennsylvania State University since 1999 and a Professor of Art Education there since 1991. At WMU, he will conduct workshops with art education students and give a performance in the Dalton Center Multi-Media Room. He has performed, lectured and presented workshops in such places as the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C., the Cleveland Performance Art Festival, the Werkleitz Biennale in Germany, The University of Bristol in England, the Robert McDougall Art Gallery and the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand.

Dr. Garoian earned his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1984, and has seventeen years of experience teaching high school art. A performance artist since 1970, he has developed and implemented critical thinking processes in visual art studio and art history courses based on the radical strategies of performance art. He used similar methods to develop interdisciplinary and intercultural programming and outreach at the Palmer Museum of Art at Penn State. Most recently he was a featured performer at the William Saroyan Festival in Fresno, California, and the Three Rivers Arts Festival in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Laura Adams Guth – Visiting Artist

Little Lolitas, Blaine
October 2 – 6, Artist-in-Residence in Photography
Tuesday, October 3
Slide lecture on her own work
7:00 p.m., Room 2320, Sangren Hall

Laura Adams Guth works primarily with photography-based media. She earned her MFA in Photography from the University of Oklahoma School of Art and a BA degree cum laude in art history and literature from University of Maryland European Division.

Among Guth’s awards are a Fellowship with the Photography Institute at Columbia University, New York, and a 2005 OVAC Artist Award of Excellence, juried by Marc Pascale of The Art Institute of Chicago. Much of her work deals with family and memory, subjects ranging from her children to an extended cast of family members, past and present. She has exhibited her photographic series Playhouse and Garden both nationally and internationally.

Her Current series Guilty Pleasures is touring nationally and utilizes experiences of family and home (inspired by family members’ acquisitions) to extend a dialogue regarding the commercialization of memory and nostalgia as manifested in collectible objects employing stereotypes such as gender, beauty and sexuality.

Guth is also holding a video workshop with the WMU Photography Students with a 1 night screening on Friday October 6, 2006 in the South Gallery of East Hall from 5-8pm.

Image Credit: Laura Guth, “Guilty Pleasures: Little Lolitas, Blaine” crystal archive print, 18” x 24”