Visiting Artists and Scholars Residency Program (VASRP)
The Visiting Artist and Scholar Residency Program bring studio artists, art historians, art critics, and curators to campus. Residents lead workshops related to their disciplines, as well as giving public lectures on their work. They engage in dialog with students and faculty and are given the time to pursue their own research and/or creative production. Students often become involved in collaborative projects with our residents. Residents may offer a seminar course on a topic within their area of expertise. Residents are afforded the opportunity to propose exhibitions in our galleries. Our residents have found their time at CSU to be engaging, positive and highly productive.
Ian Johnston is an architect turned sculptor based in Nelson, BC. Since the mid nineties he has been pursuing an interest in ceramic and more recently large-scale installations that often include ceramic. Johnston studied architecture at Algonquin College, and Carleton University in Ottawa and with the University of Toronto at Paris, France. Prior to opening his Nelson studio in 1996 he spent five years working at the Bauhaus Academy in post Berlin Wall East Germany. At the Bauhaus, together with two architects, he developed and facilitated a series of workshops around themes of urban renewal and public intervention in a tumultuous time of cultural transformation. His recent body of work Refuse Culture: Archaeology of Consumption examines our relationship with the environment in a series of installations using ceramic and mixed media appealing to multiple senses of the viewer.
While in the program in the spring, Ian is teaching a special topics course “Process and Invention – An exploration of exploration.” The objective of the course is to heighten the students’ awareness of their own creative process and to focus on the potential that each step and decision has in revealing opportunity. This class is an interdisciplinary studio that from sculpture, installation, and expanded media.
Dawn Black
Residency Schedule: October 1 – 22, Lecture, October 18, 7:30 pm
Dawn Black was born in Louisiana where she received a BFA from Louisiana State University. She earned both MA and MFA, specializing in Painting and Sculpture, from the University of Iowa School of Art and Art History. In 2000, she spent the summer exploring Venice, Italy while making prints at Scoula di Graphica, a printmaking studio on the Grand Canal. She has had solo exhibitions at Get This! Gallery (Atlanta, Georgia), Curator’s Office (Washington DC), and Kunstoffice (Berlin, Germany). Her work has been included in numerous group exhibitions and art fairs, notably: Scope and Pulse Art Fairs (Miami Beach, FL), CUNY Lehman Gallery (Bronx, NY), School 33 (Baltimore, MD), and Florida State University Museum of Art (Tallahassee, FL).
Dawn Black's work examines the practice of masquerade and its role in relation to conceptions of identity and power by depicting scenes of figures meticulously drawn in gouache, watercolor, and ink on paper. The figures in her work are selected from various sources, societies and time periods and are composed to create tableaux influenced by the ideas of James Hillman, Joseph Campbell, and mythmaking in general.
While in the program, Dawn Black will be giving a lecture about her practice and teaching a workshop with the Narrative Illustration students. She is coming to the Department of Art in October and staying for three weeks.
Liz Rodda is a multimedia artist working primarily with video and sound. She received her MFA from Massachusetts College of Art in the Studio for Interrelated Media program. Liz has exhibited work nationally and internationally. Recent exhibition venues include Dumbo Art Center, NY, 808 Gallery, Boston, Anthology Film Archives, NY, Takt Kunstprojektraum, Berlin, Germany and Oriel Mwaldan, Cardigan, UK. Liz is currently an Assistant Professor of Media/Video Art at the University of Oklahoma School of Art & Art History.
Liz Rodda’s work is about the intangible nature of desire and how it often shares the same mental space as futility. Taking the legacies of minimalism and conceptualism as departure points, she applies a slightly off-balance logic to consider both small, everyday revelations alongside galactic, otherworldly concepts. Many of her projects negotiate seemingly polar ideas such as possibility and impossibility, success and failure as well as irony and sincerity. She is interested in how we structure our world and determine what is valuable and worth pursuing. She will be joining us as our second visiting artist in resident in November of 2011. Along with lecturing, she will be giving a workshop to our students in the department.
Summer River Fellows Program
The Summer River Fellows Program supports recent MFA graduates from top programs, thereby assisting them with their professional development while adding value to our program. The program provides 2-4 weeks of residency including studio space, lab facilities, housing and a stipend. In return the Fellows provide public lectures, workshops, and interact with students and faculty during their residency.
Residency and Fellow Applications Contact Hannah Israel, Gallery Director and VASRP Coordinator
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Last Updated: 1/19/12
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