The Department of Art and Art History’s Hixson-Lied Visiting Artists & Scholars Lecture Series brings notable artists, scholars and designers to UNL each semester to enhance the education of students.
“The Hixson-Lied Visiting Artists & Scholars Series has been a tremendous success for our department,” said Peter Pinnell, the interim chair of the Department of Art and Art History. “Having the opportunity to bring in artists and scholars in nearly every discipline each semester really allows our students to connect with these guest artists and expand their artistic horizon. They begin to see the full range of possibilities that await them after school. We also welcome the community to come hear these luminaries. We have been very pleased with the caliber of artists who have participated in this series."
Underwritten by the Hixson-Lied Endowment with additional support from other sources, the series enriches the culture of the state by providing a way for Nebraskans to interact with luminaries in the fields of art, art history and design. Each visiting artist or scholar spends one to three days on campus to meet with classes, participate in critiques and give demonstrations. Every visiting artist or scholar gives at least one major lecture that is free and open to the public.
This semester’s series will include seven speakers:
• Printmaker Althea Murphy-Price will present the first lecture of the spring Hixson-Lied Visiting Artists & Scholars Lecture Series on Thursday, Feb. 4 at 5:30 p.m. in Richards Hall Rm. 15. Murphy-Price received her M.A. in printmaking and painting from Purdue University and her M.F.A. in printmaking from the Tyler School of Art at Temple University in Philadelphia.
She has exhibited in venues throughout the U.S. and abroad. Juried and group exhibitions include the 2009 International Printmaking Exhibitions in Jingdezhen, China; the 79th Annual International Print Center Competition in Philadelphia; the 2007 and 2005 Boston Printmakers Exhibition; and the 2009 Piccolo Spoleto Invitational Exhibition, in Charleston, South Carolina.
Murphy-Price has been an artist in residence at the Frank Lloyd Wright School, University of Hawaii-Hilo and Vermont Studio Center. Her work has been featured in such publications as Art Papers Magazine, Contemporary Impressions Journal, Art in Print, Printmaking: A Complete Guide to Materials and Process, and Printmakers Today. She resides in Tennessee, where she teaches at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville.
• Photographer Bryan Schutmaat will present a lecture on Feb. 11 at 5:30 p.m. in Richards Hall Rm. 15. Schutmaat is an American photographer whose work has been widely exhibited and published in the U.S. and overseas.
He has won numerous awards, and in 2014, Schutmaat was selected for PDN’s 30 new photographers to watch; in 2013, Dazed Magazine named him one of Paris Photo’s “breakout stars,” and he was chosen as a Flash Forward Emerging Photographer by the Magenta Foundation.
His first monograph, “Grays the Mountain Sends,” was published by the Silas Finch Foundation in 2013 to international critical acclaim. He holds a B.A. in history from the University of Houston and an M.F.A. in photography from Hartford Art School. His photos can be found in the permanent collection at the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston and numerous private collections.
• Studio Potter Steven Rolf will present a lecture on Feb. 23 at 5:30 p.m. in Richards Hall Rm. 15. Rolf lives and works as a studio potter in River Falls, Wisconsin, creating one-of-a-kind functional pots. His work reflects an ongoing search to unite his ideas with the generosity and the intimacy that the functional pot offers.
He holds an M.F.A. from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University, a B.F.A. from the Kansas City Art Institute, and a B.S. in Broad Area Arts from the University of Wisconsin River Falls.
He apprenticed under Wang Hui Ming, a master painter and wood engraver. He exhibits his work throughout the U.S. and has received a number of national awards. He lectures and teaches workshops throughout the country, and his work resides in noted private and national and international museum collections, as well as numerous kitchen cupboards.
• Diane Favro will present a lecture on Feb. 29 at 7:30 p.m. in Richards Hall Rm. 15. Favro is professor of architecture and urban design and associate dean of the UCLA School of Arts and Architecture.
Her research explores the urbanism of ancient Rome, archaeological historiography, women in architecture and new technologies in humanistic research. She has written on subjects ranging from Armenian architectural symbolism to urban armatures in Roman Asia Minor and depictions of women architects in American advertising.
A new major work is Roman Architecture and Urbanism (Cambridge University Press) coauthored with Fikret Yegül. As a founder of the UCLA CVRLab and the UCLA Experiential Technologies Center, Favro was an early adopter of 3-D real-time digital modeling for historical research, receiving large grants (NEH, NSF, Intel) for such pioneering, award-winning projects as the Digital Roman Forum and Digital Karnak.
• Artstream, the mobile pottery gallery, will be at UNL March 7-8. Three guest artists will be coming, including Ayumi Horie, Lorna Meaden and Lisa Orr.
There will be a lecture on the Artstream Mobile Gallery on Monday, March 7 at 10:30 a.m., location to be announced. Orr will present an artist talk on March 7 at 11:30 a.m. in Richards Hall Rm. 118. All three artists will give demonstrations on March 7 from 2-5 p.m. in Richards Hall Rm. 118. On Tuesday, March 8, Horie will present a lecture at 10:30 a.m., and Meaden will lecture at 11:30 a.m., both in Richards Hall Rm. 118. All three will again give demonstrations in Richards Hall Rm. 118 from 2-5 p.m.
Horie is a full-time studio potter from Portland, Maine, who makes functional pots, mainly with drawings of animals. She was recently awarded a Distinguished Fellow grant in Craft by the United States Artists and is the first recipient of Ceramics Monthly’s Ceramic Artist of the Year award.
Meaden, who is from Durango, Colorado, is a studio potter who creates work that is soda-fired porcelain. She says her work begins with the consideration of function, and the goal is for the form and surface of the pots to be interdependent. She received her B.A. from Fort Lewis College and her M.F.A. from Ohio University.
For more than 25 years, Orr has been a professional potter and a student of ceramics. She completed an M.F.A. at the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University and later received grants, including a Fulbright and a MAAA/NEA. She teaches, lectures and shows nationally and internationally.
The Artstream Nomadic Gallery has been putting contemporary ceramic art on the street since 2002. It is a traveling exhibition space housed in a restored 1967 Airstream trailer. Based in Carbondale, Colorado, it has exhibited in more than 150 locations.
• Sculptor Carlton Newton will present a lecture on March 31 at 5:30 p.m. in Richards Hall Rm. 15. Newton earned his M.F.A. from the San Francisco Art Institute followed by teaching stints at Princeton University, the College of William & Mary and the University of Richmond.
He is currently on the faculty of the sculpture department at Virginia Commonwealth University, where he teaches courses in studio sculpture, contemporary art criticism and video and computer technology. He has exhibited widely, including The New Museum in New York, The American Academy in Rome, The Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.
He has been the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, the American Academy in Rome Prize in Sculpture and a Virginia Commission for the Arts Fellowship.
• Photographer Takashi Arai will present a lecture April 5 at 5:30 p.m. in Richards Hall Rm. 15. Arai first encountered photography while he was a university student studying biology. In an effort to trace photography to its origins, he encountered daguerreotype, and after much trial and error he mastered the complex technique.
Beginning in 2010, Arai used the daguerreotype technique to create individual records or micro-monuments of his encounters with surviving crew members and the salvaged hull of the Daigo Fuküryumaru, a nuclear fallout-contaminated fishing boat. This project led him to photograph the deeply interconnected subjects of Fukushima, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Arai’s work has appeared in the Mori Art Museum and the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo.
In 2014, he received the Source-Cord Prize, sponsored by a contemporary photography magazine in England. His works are held in the collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography and Musée Adrien Mentienne in France, among others.
Arai’s visit to UNL is co-sponsored by the Kawasaki Reading Room.
• Deb Sokolow will present a lecture on April 28 at 5:30 p.m. in Richards Hall Rm. 15. Sokolow is a Chicago-based artist and a lecturer at Northwestern University. She is a 2012 recipient of an Artadia Grant and has participated in residencies nationally and internationally.
Her exhibition record includes 15 solo shows, including the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City and 12 x 12 at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. Selected group exhibitions include the 4th Athens Biennale, The Contemporary Art Museum in St. Louis and The Drawing Center in New York. Her work is in the collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, Connecticut, and several other notable collections.
Additional artists may be added to the schedule. Visit http://go.unl.edu/63pf for updates.
For more information on the series, contact the Department of Art and Art History at (402) 472-5522.