Spring 2012 Visiting Artists Program series
– Sam Lipsyte and Ben Marcus - Tuesday, February 7, 6:00 p.m.
 

Sam Lipsyte, photo by Ceridwen Morris Ben Marcus, © Chris Doyle
 


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Sam Lipsyte and Ben Marcus

Tuesday, February 7, 2012, 6:00 p.m.
SAIC Columbus Auditorium, 280 S. Columbus Dr.
Free admission

A 2008 Guggenheim Fellow, Sam Lipsyte is the author of the story collection Venus Drive and three novels: The Ask (New York Times Notable Book for 2010), The Subject Steve, and Home Land (New York Times Notable Book for 2005 and winner of the first annual Believer Book Award). Lipsyte's fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, The Paris Review, and Best American Short Stories 2011.

Ben Marcus is the author of four books of fiction: Notable American Women, The Father Costume, The Age of Wire and String, and The Flame Alphabet, and he is the editor of The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories. His stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, The Paris Review and McSweeney's. Presented in collaboration with SAIC’s Writing Department. Provided by the MCA store, books by both authors will be available for purchase (credit cards only).

More information: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8


 
 
– Emily Pilloton - Thursday, February 16, 6:00 p.m.
 

Emily Pilloton
Emily Pilloton, © Becka Lynn Photography

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Emily Pilloton
Distinguished Alumni Lecture Series

Thursday, February 16, 2012, 6:00 p.m.
SAIC Columbus Auditorium, 280 S. Columbus Dr.
Free admission

SAIC alumna Emily Pilloton (MFA 2005) founded the nonprofit design firm Project H to use creative capital to improve communities and public education from the inside out. Trained in architecture (University of California, Berkeley) and product design (SAIC), Pilloton believes in design as an honest process of building and activism that benefits communities by engaging them in public education experiences. She spends most of her days in a woodshop with high school students in Bertie County, North Carolina as part of Studio H, a one-year design/build/community program that teaches design thinking and vocational construction skills within the public school system. Pilloton is the author of Design Revolution: 100 Products that Empower People, and has spoken worldwide, from the TED conference stage to the Colbert Report. Presented in collaboration with SAIC’s Alumni Relations.

More information: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5


 
 
– Marilyn Minter - Monday, March 12, 6:00 p.m.
 


Marilyn Minter, photo by Bryan Bedder, The Daily. Courtesy of the artist.

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Marilyn Minter

Monday, March 12, 2012, 6:00 p.m.
The Art Institute of Chicago, Rubloff Auditorium, 230 S. Columbus Dr.
Free admission

Marilyn Minter’s paintings, videos, and photographs explore humanity’s search for pleasure by depicting lushly rendered high heels, mouths, or babies. Her recent work, created by placing a pane of glass between herself and her subject, becomes splattered with glistening paint, infusing her hyper-realistically rendered work with oozing abstraction. Her solo exhibitions include Salon 94, New York, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Center for Contemporary Art, Cincinnati, OH, La Conservera, Centro de Arte Contemporáneo, Ceutí/Murcia, Spain, Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland, OH, and the Deichtorhallen in Hamburg, Germany and Venice Biennale, both in 2011. Her video Green Pink Caviar was exhibited in the lobby of MoMA for more than a year, and shown on digital billboards on Sunset Boulevard in LA, and the Creative Time MTV billboard in Times Square, New York. 

More information: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6


 
 
– Brent Green - Wednesday, March 28, 6:00 p.m.
 


Brent Green in Gravity set, photo by Ben Liddle

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Brent Green

Wednesday, March 28, 2012, 6:00 p.m.
The Art Institute of Chicago, Rubloff Auditorium, 230 S. Columbus Dr.
Performance Lecture Free admission

Free for SAIC students
Screening: Gravity Was Everywhere Back Then
Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State Street
Thursday, March 29, 6:00 p.m.
Saturday, March 31, 12:30 p.m.
$10 general admission, $7 students, $5 Film Center members, and $4 SAIC faculty
Visit Gene Siskel Film Center website for tickets

Brent Green is a visual artist, filmmaker, and storyteller. His rickety, folk/punk style has taken many forms, beginning with hand-drawn animated shorts, moving to three-dimensional wooden stop motion characters and, most recently, to pixilation of humans. A true outsider artist, Green sees the potential in all materials and molds them with a sense of urgency and wonder that permeates throughout his work. He will present his films live, via his signature narrative style, accompanied by musicians Jim Becker (Califone, Iron & Wine, The Paulina Hollers), Donna K (sound designer for Gravity), and Mike McGinley (Califone, The Bitter Tears). Green’s films have screened at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, The Getty, Walker Art Center, Rotterdam Film Festival, and the Sundance Film Festival. His latest EMPAC-commissioned work, Too Many Men Strange Fates Are Given, will premier at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. Presented in collaboration with the Department of Film, Video, New Media, and Animation’s Conversations at the Edge series.

More information: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5


 
 
– Kellie Jones - Thursday, April 5, 6:00 p.m.
 


Kellie Jones. Courtesy of Kellie Jones

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Kellie Jones
EyeMinded: the lives of a curator

Thursday, April 5, 2012, 6:00 p.m.
SAIC Columbus Auditorium, 280 S. Columbus Dr.
Free admission

Dr. Kellie Jones is Associate Professor in the Department of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University. Her research interests include African American and African Diaspora artists, Latino/a and Latin American Artists, and issues in contemporary art and museum theory. She was the inaugural recipient of the David C. Driskell Award in African American Art and Art History from the High Museum of Art in 2005, and was named an Alphonse Fletcher, Sr. Fellow in 2008. Dr. Jones’s writings have appeared in Artforum, Flash Art, and Third Text. Her book EyeMinded: Living and Writing Contemporary Art was named one of the top art books of 2011 by Publishers Weekly. She has also worked as a curator with more than 25 major national and international exhibitions to her credit, including Now Dig This! Art and Black Los Angeles, 1960–1980, for the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. Book signing to follow; provided by the MCA Store, EyeMinded: Living and Writing Contemporary Art will be available for purchase (credit cards only).

More information: 1, 2, 3


 
 
– Pearl Fryar - Wednesday, April 18, 6:00 p.m.
 


Pearl Fryar, courtesy Jean Grosser

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Pearl Fryar

Wednesday, April 18, 2012, 6:00 p.m.
SAIC Columbus Auditorium, 280 S. Columbus Dr.
Free admission

Pearl Fryar is a sculptor who uses live plant material to create original, elegantly abstract forms of topiary. Self-taught, he takes risks which are outside the normal bounds of horticulture, and has been said to “tame trees” through the development of his unique techniques. Much of the plants in his garden were cast-offs, nurtured by Fryar into incredibly expressive topiary sculptures. He looks for the potential in each plant and encourages the growth and creativity within, reflecting his desire to inspire people, particularly youth, to find their own potential. Born in 1939 in rural North Carolina, Fryar came of age in the racially segregated South. After college, military duty, and working for 36 years at a soda can factory, his garden has brought him the most satisfaction. It is a Preservation Project of the Garden Conservancy, a national not-for-profit that preserves exceptional American gardens. Supported in part by SAIC’s Roger Brown Study Collection and Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art.

More information: 1, 2, 3


 
 
– Tehching Hsieh - Tuesday, April 24, 6:00 p.m.
 


Tehching Hsieh, One Year Performance 1980-1981. Photograph by Michael Shen. © 1981 Tehching Hsieh
Courtesy the artist, The Gilbert and Lila Silverman Collection, Detroit, and Sean Kelly Gallery, New York

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Tehching Hsieh

Tuesday, April 24, 2012, 6:00 p.m.
The Art Institute of Chicago, Rubloff Auditorium, 230 S. Columbus Dr.
Free admission

Born in Taiwan in 1950, Tehching Hsieh began work on his iconic series of One Year Performances starting in the late 1970s. Using long durations, making art and life simultaneous, Hsieh spent one year locked in a cage, one year punching a time clock every hour, one year completely outdoors, and one year tied to another person. For his final performance piece, Thirteen Year Plan, Hsieh intentionally retreated from the art world between 1986–99, setting a tone of sustained invisibility. Since 2000, having been released from the restriction of not showing his work during the 13-year period, Hsieh has exhibited and lectured in North and South America, Asia, and Europe, including major exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. In 2010 Hsieh was included in the Liverpool Biennial in the United Kingdom and the Gwangju Biennial in South Korea.

More information: 1, 2, 3, 4


 
 

 

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