Hilja Keading and Bonkers

The Art Department is fortunate to have visiting artists throughout the year funded through the Vail Visiting Artist Fund. The artists for 2007-2008 included:

Hilja Keading

Hilja Keading's video installations are the work of a contemporary artist who aims to evoke feelings of fear, desire, awe, beauty, and the complexities of the desire to give and receive love. Keading came to Denison as a Vail artist-in-residence on November 5th through 9th, 2007. She spent the week working with the students and faculty and gave a slide lecture the evening of Wednesday, Nov. 7, in Chamberlin Lodge. Her presentation was free and open to the public and was co-sponsored by the McGregor Connection Initiatives whose theme this year is "Hum/an/imal: Where We Meet."

Most recently Keading has begun creating videos with humans and animals. "Fascinated by the ways in which we consciously and unconsciously deceive ourselves and others," says Keading, "I began working with live animals to hold a mirror to internal and external manifestations of human fear and desire, the construction of the self, and the inadequacies of language." "The Bonkers Devotional," a five-channel video installation, portrays Keading and a live black bear interacting in a small cabin, surrounded by quaking aspen trees.

Keading has been producing single- and multi-channel video installations since 1987. Her work has been broadcast on television and exhibited nationally and internationally in galleries and museums, including at the Lyon Biennale, The Los Angeles County Museum, The Henry Museum in Seattle, The Geffen Contemporary Museum in Los Angeles, and at the PPOW Gallery in New York City. The J. Paul Getty Museum and the Getty Research Institute are organizing "California Video," a historical exhibition of artistic video emerging from California since the 1960s. Keading, one of 58 artists represented in the show, will display a new nine-channel installation.

A graduate of the University of California at Los Angeles, Keading's upcoming projects also include a permanent video installation at the Tom Bradley International Terminal at the Los Angeles airport.

To learn more about Hilja Keading go to:  http://blip.tv/file/138144/

Todd Slaughter, Watch House and Circle Mound, Dublin, OH

Todd Slaughter

Artist and OSU Professor Todd Slaughter spoke at Denison on Wednesday, November 28th in Chamberlin Lodge and returned to campus on Monday, December 3rd to visit and work with students.

Todd Slaughter is a professor in the Ohio State University Department of Art's sculpture program. He has held many solo and group exhibitions, both internationally and nationally. His sculptural installations have been exhibited by the Aronoff Center for the Arts and the Contemporary Art Center, Cincinnati, the Akron Art Museum, the Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, NY, Artists Space and PS 1, New York, NY, and a major retrospective at the Chicago Cultural Center. Permanent public works can be found in the Midway Airport, Chicago, and Tarifa/Algeciras, Spain. He is the recipient of several Ohio Arts Council Individual Artists Fellowship awards and a NEA Individual Artist Fellowship. Reviews of his work have appeared in Sculpture Magazine and El Pais.

To see more examples of his work go to -

http://art.osu.edu/?p=p_profiles&personid=19

Jeffry Mitchell, Elephant Lantern, 2007.

Jeffry Mitchell

Artist Jeffry Mitchell was in residence at Denison from February 1st through the 8th. He worked with students throughout the week and gave an evening presentation Monday, February 4 at 7:00 PM in Chamberlin Lodge. Sculptor, printmaker, painter and conceptual artist, Jeffry Mitchell references a wide spectrum of art history and decorative arts. "Historically the decorative arts have emphasized high craft, refined materials and absence of content. Mitchell, on the other hand, develops his high concept ideas in low-brow materials. His approach to crafting is spontaneous, expressionistic and purposefully non-technical. The result is a new direction in decorative arts that looks like an awfully cool place to go, an engaging path that challenges our most closely held assumptions about craft and the legitmacy of decoration in art."
 

Solo shows at the Henry Gallery, University of Washington, 2001, Diverseworks, Houston, TX 2001, White Columns, NYC 1997, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, NYC 1992 and the Seattle Art Museum in 1990 are to Mr. Mitchell's credit. His works are in the collections of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Contemporary Museum in Honolulu, the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University, the Philadelphia Art Museum, the New York Public Library, and the Seattle Art Museum among others. 

Link to Jeffry's Work-
http://www.portlandart.net/archives/2007/09/jeffrey_mitchel.html

Miguel Gonzalez visits with Denison students.

Miguel Gonzalez

Miguel Gonzalez, curator of the Museo La Tertulia in Cali, Columbia, was in residence at Denison from February 25th through the 29th. Gonzalez held the film screenings "Columbian Video Art", Contemporary Columbian Art", and a screening from the International Performance Festival, Museo La Tertulia, Cali. He was the keynote speaker on Wednesday the 27th with his lecture titled "Columbia: Arte y Violencia" held in Burton Morgan Auditorium, as well as working with students throughout the week.

Miguel Gonzalez is a well known Columbian art critic. His publications include Columbia, visiones y miradas (2002,2005), Entrevistas, Art y cultura de Latinoamerica y Columbia (2003), Francois Dolmetsch (2003). In 2005 he co-authored Performance y Arte-Accion en America Latina. He has received several awards for his work as assistant director in films such as Carne de tu carne (Carlos Mayolo, 1984), El dia que me quieras (Sergio Dow, 1988). He has worked with film directors Werner Herzog (Cobra verde, 1987) and Franceso Rossi (Chronicle of a Foretold Death, 1987).

Miguel Gonzalez's visit was sponsored by the Vail Visiting Artists Fund, The Patty Foresman Foundation Fund, The Honors Program, The Studio Art Program and the Department of Modern Languages.