UK School of Art and Visual Studies Announces Spring Speakers, Exhibits

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Jan. 23, 2020) — Beginning Friday, Jan. 24, the University of Kentucky’s School of Art and Visual Studies will begin the second part of its annual Visiting Artists Series. This series of lectures, exhibitions and workshops are free and open to the public. Each year the school hosts a variety of artists and scholars concerned with visual contemporary culture through its Art History & Visual Studies program. Volume Inc. will kick off this semester's lectures.

Volume Inc.: Noon Friday, Jan. 24, Bolivar Art Gallery

Co-founders of San Francisco-based design firm Volume Inc., Adam Brodsley and Eric Heiman, will discuss their Bolivar Art Gallery show “This Will (Not) Be Easy.” The digital age has gifted society infinite Pinterest, Behance and Dribble scrolls of refined visual inspiration. These feeds betray the numerous iterations, the dead-ends, the frustration and (if one is lucky) the a-ha moments necessary to create the designs we admire.

Angelica Pozo: Noon Friday, Jan. 31, Art and Visual Studies Building, Room 136

For close to two decades Angelica Pozo’s work has visually and thematically dealt with the natural world, landscape, plant forms and the environment. It is through these themes that Pozo’s work speaks of femininity, sensuality and the development of spiritual awareness.

Jesse Harrod: 6 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 12, Art and Visual Studies Building, Room 136

Jesse Harrod’s work manipulates and transforms materials to animate their sexual and sensual qualities and explore the intersections among queer kinship, support and sexuality. In sculptural installations, rope is employed as a pliable linear element much like a drawing tool, specifically utilizing known making techniques such as macramé in ways that can be understood as simultaneously restraining and support.

David Ondrik: Noon Friday, Feb. 14, Bolivar Art Gallery

Artist, educator and writer David Ondrik will discuss recent work featured in the Bolivar Art Gallery. “Inheritance” shepherds a loved one through terminal illness, environmental disaster and a glimpse at the vastness of the universe. These non-objective images are simultaneous abstractions of mutated cells and viruses, strip mines or clear-cut forests, and nebula birthing stars. Made at a human scale, they envelop the viewer, creating an immersive space to invoke contemplation of the treatment of our bodies, our home, our small corner of creation.

Denise Webber: 7 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 18, 21C Museum Hotel Lexington; and Noon Friday, Feb. 21, Bolivar Art Gallery

Denise Webber is a British artist whose work spans video, drawing and photography. Her work has been featured internationally in exhibitions at Tate Modern London, Moderna Museet Stockholm and the Museum of Contemporary Art Melbourne and is represented in the Arts Council England Collection and the Tate Archive. At 21C, Webber's discussion will focus on the video animation “Clay” (1998) in which she repositions the 19th century still photographs of Eadweard Muybridge. At the Bolivar Art Gallery talk, she will discuss her exhibition “Visible Light,” exploring the female body and its complicated relationships to beauty, creative authorship and power.

Robert Beatty: Noon Friday, Feb. 28, Art and Visual Studies Building, Room 136

Robert Beatty is a Lexington-based musician, designer and multimedia artist. He’s a longtime member of noise innovators Hair Police and is the man behind solo-act Three Legged Race. In recent years, Beatty has become one of the most sought-after designers in underground album art, illustrating covers for Tame Impala, Flaming Lips and many others.

Kevin Hamilton: Noon Friday, March 6, Art and Visual Studies Building, Room 136

Working in collaborative and cross-disciplinary modes, Kevin Hamilton produces artworks, archives, and scholarship on such subjects as race and space, public memory, history of technology and state violence. He will speak about his recently published book “Lookout America! The Secret Hollywood Studio at the Heart of the Cold War,” which tells the history of the Cold War film studio Lookout Mountain Laboratory that operated from 1947 to 1969 at the nexus between the emerging military-industrial complex and the Hollywood culture industry.

Between Systems and Grounds: 6 p.m. Wednesday, March 25, Art and Visual Studies Building, Room 136

Between systems and grounds is an ongoing collaboration between composer Paula Matthusen and visual artist Olivia Valentine, drawing on a mutually developed practice combining textile construction and electronics in real-time.

Stacey Halloway: Noon Friday, April 3, Art and Visual Studies Building, Room 136

The form of the narrative has been used for centuries to entertain, to preserve culture and to instill morals. Stories can be used to bridge cultures, languages and age barriers. Similar to Aesop, Stacey Halloway’s interests lie in the animal realm and by using specific animal attributes to explore how our formative process make up who we might become, or who we are attempting to become.

The UK School of Art and Visual Studies, part of the College of Fine Arts, offers undergraduate and graduate degrees in the fields of art studio, art history and visual studies, art education, curatorial studies and digital media design.