A Closer Look Lecture Series
The School of Creative Arts presents a diverse group of artists, art historians and critics in its Closer Look Lecture Series. This series engages the Fort Wayne Community and the Tri-state region in the analysis of specific art forms and artists in a variety of mediums.
All Closer Look lectures and performances are free to the public. This year's series is made possible in part by Canon Explorers of Light, the Advertising Federation of Fort Wayne, Arts United of Greater Fort Wayne, the Indiana Arts Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Chris Kahler, Painting
Wednesday, September 16, 2009 - 7:30 p.m.
North Campus Auditorium
In tandem with his exhibition at the School of Creative Arts, Chris Kahler will kick off the 2009-2010 Closer Look Lecture Series with an artist’s lecture. Represented by the St. Louis based Bruno David Gallery, Kahler’s artistic technique incorporates a variety of media including acrylic and oil-based paints on panel, canvas and paper. His large-scale paintings are abstract, expressive and extremely colorful. Interconnectivity is a concept that is used in numerous fields such as cybernetics, biology, ecology, network theory, and non-linear dynamics. The concept can be summarized as that all parts of a system interact with and rely on one another simply by the fact that they occupy the same system, and that a system is difficult or sometimes impossible to analyze through its individual parts considered alone. The concept is closely linked to the Observer Effect and the Butterfly Effect. Chris Kahler received his BFA from Ohio Wesleyan University in 1991. During his junior year of college, he spent a semester abroad at Parson’s School of Art And Design and the American University in Paris, France. He then went on for an MA at Eastern Illinois University and an MFA from Northwestern University in 1995. He is currently an Associate Professor at Eastern Illinois University. To see Kahler's work, visit his exhibition Interconnectivity, from August 29 through October 7, 2009 in the Weatherhead gallery in the Rolland Art Center. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Saturday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday 1 to 5 p.m.
Canon Explorers of Light - Sam Abell, Photography
Tuesday, October 13, 2009 - 7:30 p.m.
North Campus Auditorium
Sam Abell is an American photographer whose thirty-year career has been dedicated to achieving artistic expression through documentary photography. He has pursued his goals primarily through his lengthy, in-depth coverages for National Geographic magazine and its Book Division. At the same time, he has maintained a career as an artist, teacher, and author.
Abell’s work is known for its transcendent qualities, starting at the documentary level yet open to interpretation on an aesthetic level. The raw material of Abell's photography comes from close contact with the world, especially austere, remote regions. To affirm and, in fact, emphasize his commitment to what actually exists, he has chosen to work in color and in a strict documentary tradition. He has applied himself, particularly, to the photography of cultural landscape: He explores ways in which places can be purely recorded, with images simultaneously shaped by the photographer's imagination.
Originally from Sylvania, Ohio, Abell graduated from the University of Kentucky in Lexington, and received an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from the University of Toledo on May 10, 2009. In addition to his photography Mr. Abell is a member of the board of the director of the Santa Fe Center For Photography, the George Eastman House, and the University of Virginia Art Museum. In 2002 he collaborated with Leah Bendavid-Val on a retrospective of his life and work titled Sam Abell: The Photographic Life., published by Rizzoli. He is also the author of the book Seeing Gardens, published in 2001.
Scott Ziegler, Ceramics
Monday, November 16, 2009 - 7:30pm
North Campus Auditorium
Exhibiting ceramicist in USF's National Ceramics & Print Exhibition, Scott Ziegler, will host an Artist’s Lecture as part of the Closer Look Lecture Series on Monday November 16, 2009 at 7:30 p.m. in the North Campus Auditorium. Ceramics Monthyl refers to Ziegler's work as highly detailed ceramic sculpture. Influenced by the time he spent as a toy designer, Ziegler spends hours and hours building up the color and detail in his work using cone 6 slips and commercial stains. Scott Ziegler painstakingly layers color over his meticulously formed sculptures to achieve bright, inviting surfaces.
Armin Mersmann, Painting and Drawing
Thursday, January 14 - 7:30pm
North Campus Auditorium
Armin Mersmann is a nationally recognized artist who has work in over 350 corporate, public, and private collections. He has been a Top 100 American Portrait Artist by Artist Magazine both in 1990 and 1994. He is known for his intense naturalistic graphite drawings. He describes his work as narrative and symbolistic. Both collective and personal, his work deals with the evidence of humankind's existence through artifacts. His drawings react to man's preoccupation with cheating death and creating representative objects, tokens and icons in an attempt to achieve immortality.