Harry Pearce, Pentagram Partner. Photograph by Richard Foster

Tuesday, September 21, 6:00 p.m.
Columbus Auditorium, 280 South Columbus Drive

Graphic designer, Harry Pearce, joined Pentagram's London office as a partner in 2006 having co-founded and grown Lippa Pearce to become one of the UK's most respected design agencies over the previous 16 years. Encompassing the public and private sectors, local and global charities, and commercial enterprises, his diverse clients include The Co-operative, Halfords, Phaidon Press, the Science Museum, Saks Fifth Avenue, and Shakespeare's Globe and Boots. To each he brings his own brand of intelligence combined with elegance and warmth mixed with wit. Pearce is also a member of the advisory board and lead designer for Witness - a human rights charity founded by Peter Gabriel. Throughout his career he has been concerned to make connections, to use design to connect minds so that they share a different and clearer vision. In 2009 he published his collection of design puzzles, Conundrums: Typographic Conundrums. Following the lecture, Harry Pearce will sign copies of Conundrums ($14.99; credit cards only). Book sales provided by The MCA Store.

Access articles and bios for visiting artists through the Flaxman Library here.

Maria Martinez-Cañas, courtesy of the artist

Adaptation 001, 2006, archival pigment prints on archival 100% cotton paper, approximately 16 x 16 inches on 17 x 22 inches paper, Editions of 3. Courtesy of the artist

Distinguished Alumni Lecture Series
Tuesday, October 5, 6:00 p.m.
Columbus Auditorium, 280 South Columbus Drive

Cuba-born and Miami-based, SAIC alumna Maria Martinez-Cañas (MFA 1984) fuses aspects of painting, photography, and collage to excavate an allusive journey back to starting points, both personal and cultural. Her artistic quest juggles contradictory elements and innovative media to resolve feelings of displacement and exile. Martinez-Cañas's multidimensional images explore the complexities of identity with a balance of fragility and power. Her works have been exhibited extensively in the United States and abroad, with 34 one-person exhibitions and more than 250 group exhibitions, and are included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, Philadelphia Museum of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, and many others. This lecture is presented in collaboration with SAIC Alumni Relations.

Access articles and bios for visiting artists through the Flaxman Library here.

Camille Utterback. Photograph by Lyle Troxell.

Untitled 5, 2004, interactive installation. Courtesy of the artist

Monday, October 25, 6:00 p.m.
SAIC Columbus Auditorium, 280 S. Columbus Drive

Camille Utterback is an internationally acclaimed artist whose interactive installations and reactive sculptures engage participants in a dynamic process of kinesthetic discovery and play. Utterback's work explores the aesthetic and experiential possibilities of linking computational systems to human movement and gesture in layered and often humorous ways. Her work focuses attention on the continued relevance and richness of the body in our increasingly mediated world. Utterback's extensive exhibit history includes more than fifty shows on four continents. Recent awards include the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (2009), Transmediale International Media Art Festival Award (2005), Rockefeller Foundation New Media Fellowship (2002), and a Whitney Museum commission for their ArtPort website (2002).

Access articles and bios for visiting artists through the Flaxman Library here.

Martha Wilson, photograph by Kathy Grove.

Martha Wilson as Barbara Bush, 2005. Photo by Dennis W. Ho. Courtesy of the artist.

Tuesday, November 9, 6:00 p.m.
Columbus Auditorium, 280 South Columbus Drive

Over the past four decades, pioneering artist Martha Wilson has created conceptual performance, photography, and video works that explore her female subjectivity and sensitivity to surveillance. Wilson was a founding member of the all-girl, conceptual feminist punk rock group DISBAND, and she has widely performed her signature impersonations of high-profile political figures since the early 80s—Alexander Haig, Nancy Reagan, Barbara Bush, and Tipper Gore. In 1976 Wilson founded (and has since directed) Franklin Furnace Archive, Inc, the stalwart institution that presents and preserves artists' books, temporary installations, and performance art. During the last 30 years, Franklin Furnace has presented nearly 2000 events and Wilson has developed exhibitions, publications, courses and pedagogical resources concerning the artistic movement and philosophy we now know as Postmodernism.

Access articles and bios for visiting artists through the Flaxman Library here.

Lynda Barry- Photo by Fred Milton

Lynda Barry self-portrait. Courtesy of Drawn and Quarterly

Monday, November 15, 6:00 p.m.
Columbus Auditorium, 280 South Columbus Drive

The inimitable creator behind the syndicated strip Ernie Pook's Comeek, Lynda Barry works as a painter, cartoonist, writer, illustrator, playwright, editor, commentator, and teacher. Barry explores the depths of the inner and outer realms of creation and imagination, where play can be serious, monsters have purpose, and not knowing is an answer unto itself. Widely praised, her works include the books One! Hundred! Demons!; The! Greatest! of! Marlys!; Cruddy: An Illustrated Novel; Naked Ladies! Naked Ladies! Naked Ladies!; her bestselling and acclaimed Drawn & Quarterly, What it is, which received the Eisner Award for Best Reality Based Graphic Novel and the R.R.Donnelly Award for highest literary achievement by a Wisconsin author; and The Good Times are Killing Me, which was adapted into an off-Broadway musical. Following the lecture, Lynda Barry will sign copies of her new book, Picture This ($30.95; credit cards only). Book sales provided by The MCA Store.

Access articles and bios for visiting artists through the Flaxman Library here.

Monday, December 6, 6:00 p.m.
Columbus Auditorium, 280 South Columbus Drive

Chiefly known for his elegant and scholarly writing, Richard Sennett deftly explores the disciplines of architecture, design, music, art, literature, history, and political and economic theory. Celebrated for his studies of social ties in cities, Sennett has produced more than a dozen books, including three novels, mostly on aspects of the urban experience and the interconnection between authority, modernism, and public life. In the 1970s Sennett co-founded the New York Institute for the Humanities at New York University, and since the mid-90s he has split his time between NYU and the London School of Economics. His books include The Fall of Public Man; Respect, In an Age of Inequality; The Culture of New Capitalism; and, most recently, The Craftsman. This presentation is supported in part by the William H. Bronson and Grayce Slovett Mitchell Lecture Series in the Departments of Architecture, Interior Architecture, and Designed Objects and Fiber and Material Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Access articles and bios for visiting artists through the Flaxman Library here.

The Fall 2010 Visiting Artist Program series

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ARTIST ARTICLES AND BIOS

The Spring 2010 Visiting Artist Program series lectures are now available on podcasts!