2011-12 Visual Culture Lecture Series

Location: Montague Hall 70

Tuesdays @ 6:00 PM

February 7

Amze Emmons

Assistant Professor of Printmaking

Amze Emmons is an artist, illustrator, curator, living and working in Philadelphia, PA. Born in rural upstate New York, he received a BFA Ohio Wesleyan University at the University of Vermont. He went on to receive his MA and MFA from the University of Iowa. His work is exhibited both nationally and internationally. Currently, he teaches art at Muhlenberg college in Allentown. Prior to that he taught printmaking at the University of Iowa and drawing and print at University of Vermont.  

March 20

Gregory Volk

Gregory Volk is a New York-based art critic and freelance curator. He writes regularly for Art in America, and his articles and reviews have also appeared in many other publications, including Parkett and Sculpture. Among his recent contributions to exhibition catalogues are essays on Joan Jonas (Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona, 2007) and Bruce Nauman (Milwaukee Art Museum, 2006). His essay on Vito Acconci is featured in Vito Acconci: Diary of a Body, 1969 - 1973, published by Charta in 2007. Together with Sabine Russ, Gregory Volk has curated numerous exhibitions, including Agitation and Repose at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery in New York, Public Notice: Paintings in Laumeier Sculpture Park in St. Louis, and Surface Charge at the Anderson Gallery in Richmond, Virginia. Gregory Volk received his B.A. from Colgate University and his M.A. from Columbia University.

March 27

Rocky McCorkle, Photographer

Rocky McCorkle, born in 1978 in Columbus, Ohio, currently lives and works in San Francisco, California.  He studied photography at The Ohio State University in Columbus (2001-2005) and earned his MFA at the San Francisco Art Institute (2005-2007).   

For the past few years, McCorkle has been constructing a silent film narrating the internal discourse of an elderly woman in today's pervasively influential world.  Through a sequence of stills, “You and Me On A Sunny Day” explores the impact that film and fictional media has on her way of life.  Each frame in this ongoing series is a large-format (8x10-inch) photograph. 
In 2008, McCorkle's solo exhibition “You and Me On A Sunny Day” at Little Tree Gallery received a rave review in Artweek, where contributing editor Colin Berry compared his work to the photography of Lukas Roth and Andreas Gursky.  In 2007, he was a winner in PDN (Photo District News) Magazine's Pix Digital Imaging Contest 13 and Photographer's Forum College Contest.  McCorkle, a member of Nikon's Emerging Artist Hall of Fame, has been exhibited at Baer Ridgway Exhibitions in San Francisco, Lennox Contemporary in Toronto, and GoEun Museum of Photography in South Korea.   

April 10

Annual Student Show Jurors:

Studio: Scott Stulen, Walker Art Center

"My work encompasses the entirety of my professional activities as a curator, programmer, writer and studio practice. This wide range of artistic production is united by an exploration of how shared cultural memory, in particular memory based on specific images, texts, and popular media can slip into fiction or fabrication, creating a partial truth recalled as authentic memory or experience. I am interested in how popular culture bonds with fragments of memory to create unexpected connections and points of entry, which linger decades later. I am fascinated in how familiar, yet isolated references can be combined to create a new experience, which is both personal, but strangely out of context. I view my role much like a DJ, sampling fragments of pop culture, personal and collective histories and false memories and combining them into a singular work. The key is in selecting, remixing and dropping of the appropriate sequence of samples, thus leading the audience to find meaning in unexpected places."

GD: Bud Rodecker

Bud Rodecker is a graphic designer, photographer, artist, thinker, talker, and jokester. He collaborates with John Pobojewski, Tinne Van Loon and Rick Valicenti at Thirst. Mulitidisciplinary, and often experimental, Bud’s work is unified by an emphasis on typography and strong graphics.

At Thirst he designed Archeworks’s publication Works, along with AW—a custom typeface based on Akzidenz Grotesk and inspired by Bell Centennial. Works played an important role in Archeworks’s acceptance into the 2010 Venice Architectural Biennale. To follow up the success of Works, Thirst was asked to create a film to showcase in Venice. Directed by Valicenti and animated by Pobejewski and Rodecker, Gather Give Grow represented Archeworks and Chicago in the U.S. Pavilion at the 2010 Venice Biennale. Rodecker’s poster work has been accepted into the Chicago Design Archives, the Chicago Poster Biennial, and has earned a platinum award from Graphis.

Outside the office Rodecker continues to explore design and the process of creativity. He’s created political t-shirts and posters that have been featured in print, online, and at Chicago’s Printervention show. With RicharDaily, a personal project initiated in 2010, Rodecker set out to generate a light’s worth of art and design exploration (with a daily deadline). The exploration resulted in several pieces that were awarded a place in Typeforce 2. Rodecker has participated in numerous design-related talks, workshops, and panels—sharing his unique perspective on design and the creative process.

Rodecker earned a degree in Graphic Design with a minor in photography from the University of Minnesota Duluth. From 2005-2007 he was president of the Student Design Organization (SDO). Immediately following graduation in May 2007, he came to Chicago to begin his career at 3st with Pobojewski and Valicenti.

April 19

Brian Collins

Brian Collins is Chief Creative Officer of COLLINS:, an innovation-led firm dedicated to inventing branded experiences, digital interactions and communications that shape both companies and people for the better. His team's work has been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, ABC World News and Fast Company, which named him an American Master of Design. From 1998 to 2007 he was Chief Creative Officer of the Ogilvy & Mather Brand Integration Group (BIG), the agency's brand and innovation division. His team's work at Ogilvy includes the Hershey Chocolate Factory in Times Square which Business Week named a "Retail Wonder of the World"; Helios House, BP's sustainability-driven, experimental gas station in Los Angeles; NYC2102, the campaign to win the Olympic Games for New York City; and work for Coca-Cola, Motorola, Jaguar Cars, Mattel, American Express, IBM, Goldman Sachs and Kodak.

They launched the Dove "Campaign for Real Beauty" in North America with an international photo exhibition that explored what beauty meant to the best women photographers in the world. The National Organization for Women honored his team with their annual Image Award for this work. His other clients have included Levi Strauss & Co., MTV, CNN, and The New York Public Library. The first work done for his new firm was for The Alliance for Climate Protection, Nobel Laureate Al Gore's organization to end the climate crisis. It was done in partnership with The Martin Agency in Richmond, Virginia. In 2006 Brian founded "Designism: Design for Social Change," an annual forum to inspire young creative people to take active roles in social causes.

In 1996 Brian produced "The Ecology of Design", a handbook on environmental design thinking published by the AIGA. Brian is Vice President of the Art Directors Club and is on the faculty of The School of Visual Arts Graduate Program in design. He is a Distinguished Alumna of the Massachusetts College of Art. In 2008 he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California.

April 24

Eva Cronquist and Margareta Wallin-Wictorin

Art Education in Sweden

EVA CRONQUIST

Eva Cronquist is an adjunct faculty member in art education at Linneaus University. She has been an art educator/museum educator for the past twenty years in Växjö , Sweden (1987-2007). During this period art education in art galleries, art museums, and culture schools was vividly discussed in Sweden. At the same time, contemporary art was moving towards a conceptual based art concept.

The pedagogical question in art institutions became: How do we create an education in the conceptual art situation? At the Konsthall, the city art museum, this was discussed and tested in practice. The educational activities developed investigative projects to find both a new approach and new methods of art education. Experiences from those projects have led her to try out a Conceptual Art practice in courses at Linnaeus University. As a doctoral student in Educational Science she is striving to create a theoretical pedagogical perspective in which the Conceptual Art, methodology and in theory, can be useful in educational situations, working within the concept of Conceptual Art. In her presentation she will talk about some of these projects.

MARGARETA WALLIN-WICTORIN

Margareta Wallin-Wictorin is an art educator/art historian who specializes in the study of visual culture, gender studies, comic-books, and international youth. Both art educators regularly participate in international research projects.

Ideas expressed at the VCLS talk will include a discussion on the advancement of creative education through art and crafts in Sweden and the promotion of international understanding. Focusing on vital present and future issues and challenges of art education, the scientific and artistic presentation is designed to improve dialogue from diverse perspectives and to offer a platform for generating new visions and methods for the cross-cultural research and practice of art education in Minnesota and Sweden. 

National Treasures, Amze Emmons 2010

Graphite, gouache, acrylic on paper 18.5x24"

Chemical Heritage, Amze Emmons 2011

Graphite, gouache, watercolor on paper 22x30"

Modern Popular Movement, Amze Emmons 2011

Graphite, gouache, acrylic on panel 20x24"

Cecilia Alhqvist