Wed, Sept. 16, 2020 / 5:00-5:30pm EST
SX cloud recording courtesy Jill Linton, Learning Technology Services, Edinboro University
Grace Chin and Lisa Austin opened the all virtual symposium introducing The Sculpture Center, and the past and present of SculptureX.
Grace Chin, the Executive Director of The Sculpture Center, in Cleveland, OH, has over twenty years of experience as a development professional, arts manager, practicing artist, and business owner. Ms. Chin holds a BA in studio art - sculpture from Dartmouth College, and a masters of arts administration from Columbia University.
Lisa Austin, through the CIVITAS.design collaborative she co-founded in 2004, has initiated the creation of several local groups and organized more than 100 events and written dozens of essays for Erie Times-News and the ErieReader. Austin ran for Mayor (and lost) but continues her work in the community through Connect Urban Erie , one the the groups she co-founded to create change via commissioned cartoons, animations, film shorts, presentations and other actions. She teaches foundations, sculpture and socially-engaged art at Edinboro University, where she has recently be appointed to run the Bruce Gallery.
Wed, Sept. 16, 2020 / 5:30-7:00pm EST
SX cloud recording courtesy Jill Linton, Learning Technology Services, Edinboro University
NOTE panel recording begins after the welcome by Chin and Austin.
Paula Burleigh organized a panel discussion with with Aruna D’Souza, Kilolo Luckett, Rhonda Matthews and Leslie C. Sotomayor about the symbolic power of sculpture in the public sphere in light of the removal of Confederate (and other controversial) monuments.
Paula Burleigh is an Assistant Professor of Art History at Allegheny College, where she serves as director of the Allegheny Art Galleries. Burleigh’s research interests include visionary architecture, feminism and gender as they relate to art, and utopian/dystopian themes in art and popular visual culture. Her reviews have been published in The Brooklyn Rail and in Art Forum, this past June, with her timely essay, “Zoom and the Modernist Grid.” For SX 2020, Burleigh is moderating the opening SX 2020 event - a discussion on Art & Agency with panelists Aruna D’Souza, author, Whitewalling: Art, Race and Protest in 3 Acts / Rhonda Matthews, political science professor at Edinboro University / and Leslie C Sotomayor, artist and art education professor at Edinboro University.
Aruna D'Souza writes about modern and contemporary art; intersectional feminisms and other forms of politics; and how museums shape our views of each other and the world. Her most recent book Whitewalling: Art, Race, and Protest in 3 Acts (Badlands Unlimited) was named one of the best art books of 2018 by the New York Times.
Photo Credit: huny young
Kilolo Luckett is an art historian, curator, and writer based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. With over twenty years of experience in arts administration and cultural production, she is committed to elevating the voices of underrepresented visual artists, specifically women and artists of color. She is consulting curator of Visual Arts at the August Wilson African American Cultural Center and serves as an Art Commissioner for the City of Pittsburgh’s Art Commission. She is founder and executive director of the forthcoming art space ALMA|LEWIS (named after abstract artists Alma Thomas and Norman Lewis), an experimental, contemporary art platform for critical thinking, dialogue, and creative expression dedicated to Black culture. She is currently writing an authorized biography on Naomi Sims, one of the first black supermodels.
Rhonda Matthews i is an associate professor of political science and women’s studies in the Department of Political Science and Criminal Justice at Edinboro University. Matthews is dedicated to the advocacy and empowerment of women and children as a result of her previous work as a sexual assault survivor counselor. Using tenets of intersectional analysis, her primary areas of academic interest include gender & women’s studies, sociological theory, popular culture and stratification. She is a long-time fan of science fiction, superheroes and comic books and is married to a badass man who together are rearing one badass daughter.
Leslie C. Sotomayor, PhD, is an artist, curator, and educator in Art Education at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania. Sotomayor focuses on Gloria Anzaldúa's theory of conocimiento and autohistoria-teoría, a feminist writing practice of theorizing one's experiences as transformative acts to guide her curatorial, studio practice and teaching methodology in curating environments for empowerment.
Thurs, Sept. 17, 2020 / 12:00-1:15pm EST
NO RECORDING AVAILABLE
Professional Feedback
Volunteer faculty/staff met with college students for a 20-minute private zoom session.
Thurs, Sept. 17, 2020 / 3:00-4:15pm EST
SX cloud recording courtesy Jill Linton, Learning Technology Services, Edinboro University
Artist educator Madeline Schwartzman presented a fast-paced overview of her work, her books and her collaborative work with students, and, conversed with James Louks about her practice.
James Louks was born in Wyoming and grew up in South Dakota. He completed his undergraduate studies in Sociology and Studio Art at Black Hills State University and earned his MFA from the University of Montana. His studio practice is multidisciplinary and explores the socioeconomics and culture of rural America. Louks is an Assistant Professor of Visual Arts at Chatham University in Pittsburgh, PA.
Madeline Schwartzman is a New York City writer, filmmaker and architect whose work explores human narratives and the human sensorium through social art, curating, experimental video making and writing books including See Yourself Sensing: Redefining Human Perception and See Yourself X: Human Futures Expanded. Schwartzman teaches at Barnard College and Parsons: the New School for Design.
Thurs, Sept. 17, 2020 / 6:00-7:30pm EST
SX cloud recording courtesy Jill Linton, Learning Technology Services, Edinboro University
Grace Chin joined in a conversation organized by Kyle Dancewicz and artists Baseera Khan, and Kenneth Tam about teaching art online.
Grace Chin, the Executive Director of The Sculpture Center, in Cleveland, OH, has over twenty years of experience as a development professional, arts manager, practicing artist, and business owner. Ms. Chin holds a BA in studio art - sculpture from Dartmouth College, and a masters of arts administration from Columbia University.
Kyle Dancewicz is the Queens, NY SculptureCenter’s Director of Exhibitions and Programs. In his April 2020 Art in America essay, Dancewicz asked the question, “Can you teach art online?” Dancewicz spoke to a dozen art professors and found that the challenge is opening up existential questions about art as much as logistical ones. For his SX panel discussion, Dancewicz has invited artist educators Baseera Khan and Kenneth Tam to consider further the nature, limits and possibilities of teaching on line.
Bassera Khan, a New York-based artist, combines distinct and often mutually exclusive cultural references to explore the conditions of alienation, displacement, assimilation, and fluidity. Khan sublimates colonial histories through performance and sculpture in order to map geographies of the future. Khan’s first solo exhibition was held at Simone Subal, New York and a two-person show at Jenkins Johnson Project. Khan has exhibited at the Sculpture Center (2018), Aspen Museum (2017), Participant Inc. (2017), Moudy Gallery at Texas Christian University (2017), Fine Arts Center of Colorado College (2018), and has performed at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Art POP Montreal International Music Festival. Khan was an artist in residence at Pioneer Works (2018-19) and Abrons Art Center (2016-17), was an International Travel Fellow to Jerusalem/Ramallah through Apexart (2015), and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (2014). Khan is published in 4Columns, The New York Times, The New Yorker, Artforum, Art in America, BOMB, Brooklyn Rail, and TDR Drama Review. Kahn received an MFA from Cornell University (2012) and a BFA from the University of North Texas (2005).
Kenneth Tam is an American Postwar & Contemporary artist from New York who works across performance, video, sculpture and installation. Tam’s work has been exhibited at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, MIT List Visual Arts Center, The Hammer Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and Commonwealth and Council gallery in Los Angeles. Upcoming shows include a residency at The Kitchen and a solo exhibition at the Queens Museum. Tam has been featured in articles for Art-Agenda, The New York Times and Artforum. The most recent article is Meet the NYC Art Community: Kenneth Tam on Scrutinizing Masculinity written by Dessane Lopez Cassell for Hyperallergic in May 2020. Tam earned an MFA from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA and a BFA at The Cooper Union, New York, NY.
Fri, Sept. 18, 2020 / 12:00-1:15pm EST
SX cloud recording courtesy Jill Linton, Learning Technology Services, Edinboro University
Sharon Massey and Sean Derry discuss Sculpture Support System, a collaborative endeavor with their students that creates participatory artworks situated in public with Delanie Jenkins.
Delanie Jenkins completed a BA in Art and Performance at the University of Texas at Dallas and an MFA in Sculpture at the University of Colorado. Through an early career in architectural design she developed an awareness in constructed environments that transforms through material and process-based explorations into site specific, installation, and performance works. Responsive to people, place, and circumstance, recent works have become tools and gestures for communal contemplation, urgency, and repair. Jenkins is Chair of the Department of Studio Arts at the University of Pittsburgh, where she teaches installation, sculpture, and a summer field study in rural Wyoming.
Sculpture Support System is a collaborative endeavor of artists Sharon Massey and Sean Derry and their students. The team collaborates on Social Practice projects that engage community members in a range of art making processes. We each maintain individual studio art practices but come together as collaborators to work on a larger scale and to develop projects targeted at expressing underrepresented voices. Sculpture Support System provides us the opportunity to work beyond our individual artistic practices to conceive of and create extensive participatory artworks that are situated in the public realm.
Thurs, Sept. 17, 2020 / 3:00-4:15pm EST
SX cloud recording courtesy Jill Linton, Learning Technology Services, Edinboro University
Angie Seykora facilitated 5 minute presentations with Saige Baxter, Abigail Olive Benkovich, Kimberlyn Bloise, Ryley Brown, Melanie Landsittel, Ella Medicus, David K. Ross and Caitlyn Sweetland.
Angie Seykora, an instructor of drawing and sculpture at Creighton University, Omaha, NB, creates installation, sculpture, drawing, and painting that repurpose industrial and found materials. Through process-driven, almost mechanical methods of assembly, she emphasizes accumulation and tactile materiality to produce work that references the history of minimalism, bodily systems, and "thinking through making". Seykora’s work is exhibited and collected, regionally, nationally and internationally. As a graduate student at Edinboro, Seykora led the effort to jury and host the first SculptureX “Speed Dating” event at the Cleveland Institute of the Arts where students quickly presented their work to each other and to faculty from a dozen collaborating institutions. For SX 2020, Seykora is coaching eight emerging artists to present their work: Saige Baxter, BFA, Seton Hill University, Greensburg, PA. / Abigail Olive Benkovich , BFA, University of Pittsburgh, heading to RIT for an MFA in Metals. / Kimberlyn Bloise, pursuing MFA in Ceramics, Edinboro University, Edinboro, PA. / Ryley Brown, earning a BFA at OCAD University, Toronto, ON, Canada. / Melanie Landsittel, BFA, Chatham University, Pittsburgh, PA. / Ella Medicus, I earned a BFA at Alfred University, Alfred, NY. / Cleveland born David K Ross is a third year BFA student at the Cleveland Institute of Art, Cleveland, OH. His practice incorporates ambiguous use of materials, traditional crafting processes, as well as integrated media to explore the liminal spaces between functional object and art making. / Caitlyn Sweetland, BFA student, Slippery Rock University, Slippery Rock, PA
David K. Ross, Cleveland Institute of Art
Thurs, Sept. 17, 2020 / 5:30-7:00pm EST
SX cloud recording courtesy Jill Linton, Learning Technology Services, Edinboro University
Tom Como and Mary Elizabeth Meier joined in a conversation with J. Morgan Puett following her presentation on decades of art-making including the living, interactive, installation and “residency” - Mildred’s Lane.
Tom Como, a professor at Slippery Rock University, earned his BFA from Indiana University of PA and MFA at Kent State University, Kent, Ohio. Como teaches all levels of Sculpture, Basic Studio Drawing and Art History. Como exhibits widely and is a member of the Pittsburgh Society of Sculptors, the International Sculpture Center, and the National Council on Education for the Ceramics Arts. Como will be convening the SX Session, Mildred’s Lane. Following J. Morgan Puett’s presentation, Como and Mary Elizabeth Meier will have a conversation with Puett about her work and about her Mildred’s Lane project..
Mary Elizabeth Meier is an artist, art educator, and arts-based researcher working in collaborative inquiry as a methodological and theoretical foundation for artist-teacher professional learning. She works with arts-based research methods to explore art in-the-making as shifts in thinking, collaboration, and community. She is Assistant Professor and Graduate Program Head of Art Education at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania and a recent Past President of the Pennsylvania Art Education Association. Meier holds a Ph.D. in Art Education from The Pennsylvania State University.
J. Morgan Puett is an interdisciplinary artist working in installation art, design, architecture, landscape, and film – rearranging intersections by applying conceptual tools. Morgan’s early work is known for interventions into the fashion system with a series of storefront installation and clothing designs in Manhattan during the eighties and nineties. She exhibits art installations about needle trade systems around the world. Puett is the architect of The Mildred’s Lane Project, which continues to forge new ground in the realm of social engagement. Puett ‘s awards include an Abakanowicz Award, a Pollock-Krasner, a Guggenheim, the United States Artists, the Anonymous Was A Woman amongst many others.
Sat, Sept. 19, 2020 / 10:00-11:15am EST
NO RECORDING AVAILABLE
SculptureX Planning Meeting
Pati Beachley met with faculty, staff and students to plan next year’s SX.
Pati Beachley, is a sculptor living in Pittsburgh. Originally from Baltimore, she moved to Pittsburgh to teach at Seton Hill University in Greensburg, PA, where she serves as Chair of the Department Art & Design and Professor of Art. She exhibits her work actively in Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York, Washington, DC, Virginia, Maryland, and Tennessee. She has had multiple solo shows, national shows, curated, and juried exhibitions. Her studio and foundry is in Pittsburgh where she casts all her own metalwork. She attended University of Maryland College Park for her undergraduate degree, studying with Anne Truitt and John Ruppert. She received her Master of Fine Arts degree in Sculpture from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond studying with Liz King, Myron Helfgott, Howard Risatti, Kendall Buster, and Lester Van Winkle. She contributes volunteer service to the larger arts community in Pittsburgh by serving on multiple boards of arts organizations. She is a member of the Pittsburgh Society of Sculptors and the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh.
Sat, Sept. 19, 2020 / 12:00-1:15pm EST
NO RECORDING AVAILABLE
Small Group Crits
Volunteer faculty/staff met with three college students for small group critiques.
Sat, Sept. 19, 2020 / 2:00-3:15pm EST
SX cloud recording courtesy Jill Linton, Learning Technology Services, Edinboro University
Charlotte H. Wellman spoke with artist Soheila Azadi following her presentation addressing her experiences of being a woman growing up under theocracy and its relationship with her experiences as a woman of color living under Democracy.
Charlotte H. Wellman is an Associate Professor of Art History at Edinboro University, where she teaches courses on modern and contemporary art, photography, gender, and theory. She has collaborated with contemporary artists, resulting in publications on Gary Spinoza’s visionary sculpture and Kathe Kowalski’s photographs of female elders and inmates. Her special focus is the intersection of gender, aging, and the visual arts. She will introduce Edinboro alumna Soheila Azadi, and following the presentation, will have a conversation with Azadi about her practice.
Soheila Azadi is an interdisciplinary visual artist, writer, educator and mother based in Portland, Oregon and Iran. Born in the capital of Islamic cities, Esfahan, Azadi absorbed story-telling skills through Persian miniature drawings and Islamic architecture since she was nine. Azadi is dedicated to Transnational Feminism with a passionate devotion to the ways in which gender, sex, race, culture, and religion intersect.
Sat, Sept. 19, 2020 / 4:00-5:30pm EST
SX cloud recording courtesy Jill Linton, Learning Technology Services, Edinboro University
Artist Marvin Touré and curator Kilolo Luckett discuss Marvin's recent work as well as the artist and curator relationship.
SX CONVENER: Delanie Jenkins with Kilolo Luckett and Marvin Toure’.
Delanie Jenkins completed a BA in Art and Performance at the University of Texas at Dallas and an MFA in Sculpture at the University of Colorado. Through an early career in architectural design she developed an awareness in constructed environments that transforms through material and process-based explorations into site specific, installation, and performance works. Responsive to people, place, and circumstance, recent works have become tools and gestures for communal contemplation, urgency, and repair. Jenkins is Chair of the Department of Studio Arts at the University of Pittsburgh, where she teaches installation, sculpture, and a summer field study in rural Wyoming.
Photo Credit: huny young
Kilolo Luckett is an art historian, curator, and writer based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. With over twenty years of experience in arts administration and cultural production, she is committed to elevating the voices of underrepresented visual artists, specifically women and artists of color. She is consulting curator of Visual Arts at the August Wilson African American Cultural Center and serves as an Art Commissioner for the City of Pittsburgh’s Art Commission. She is founder and executive director of the forthcoming art space ALMA|LEWIS (named after abstract artists Alma Thomas and Norman Lewis), an experimental, contemporary art platform for critical thinking, dialogue, and creative expression dedicated to Black culture. She is currently writing an authorized biography on Naomi Sims, one of the first black supermodels.
Marvin Touré is an Ivorian-American artist who uses objects of innocence (artifacts and stories from his childhood in Atlanta, Georgia) as a vehicle to interrogate themes of race and mental health. Touré received a BA in New Media Arts with a minor in Architecture from Southern Polytechnic State University (now Kennesaw State University) in 2014 and an MFA in Fine Arts from The School of Visual Arts in 2016. Recently, Touré participated in the group exhibition A Muffled Sound Underwater presented by LatchKey Gallery in New York City and was awarded both the Black Artist Fund grant and the Peter S. Reed Foundation grant for Mixed Media/Sculpture.
Sat, Sept. 19, 2020 / 5:30-6:00pm EST
SX cloud recording courtesy Jill Linton, Learning Technology Services, Edinboro University
Pati Beachley offered and overview of plans for the Fall 2021 SX in Pittsburgh and Greensburg. Lisa Austin concluded the virtual program with shout out to all sponsors and an invitation to participate in a Feb. 5th virtual, mini SX.
Pati Beachley, originally from Baltimore, moved to Pittsburgh to teach at Seton Hill University in Greensburg, PA, where she serves as Chair of the Art & Design Department and Associate Professor of Art. She exhibits her work actively in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Washington, DC, Virginia, Maryland, and Tennessee. Beachley has had multiple solo shows, national shows, curated, and juried exhibitions. Her studio and foundry is in Pittsburgh where she casts all her own metalwork. She attended University of Maryland College Park for her undergraduate degree, and received her Master of Fine Arts degree in Sculpture from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. She is a member of the Pittsburgh Society of Sculptors and the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh and is leading the planning for SculptureX 2021 in Pittsburgh and Greensburg.
Tune in next year!
