Fall 2013

The Kansas City Art Institute is pleased to announce the fall 2013 lineup of artists, designers and scholars who will speak as part of the college's "Current Perspectives."

Unless otherwise noted, all lectures are free and open to the public and will be held at 7 p.m. Thursdays in Epperson Auditorium, Vanderslice Hall on the KCAI campus, 4415 Warwick Blvd., Kansas City, Mo.

Fall 2013

Sept.5: Judith G. Levy

Sponsored by the H&R Block Artspace at KCAI

Multidisciplinary artist Judith G. Levy showcases her work in solo and group exhibtions throughtout the United States. She has received an Andy Warhol Foundation Rocket grant and a Lilly Foundation Creative Renewal grant, and in 2012, she was awarded an Artopia Award by Kansas City's Pitch magazine. Levy received a B.A. degree in visual art from Hunter College and earned an M.S.W. degree from Adelphi University.

Levy kicks off the Current Perspectives series with her film "NV in KC: A Story About Artists and Envy in Kansas City." She will answer questions following the screening. "NV in KC" is the first film screened as part of the H&R Block Artspaces' current exhibition, "Performance Now." The exhibit continues through Oct. 12.

Levy’s humorous and probing film is set in the vibrant art world of present-day Kansas City. Well-known, local performers, such as Jaimie Warren, Shannon Michalski, De De DeVille and Erin McGrane, appear alongside notable arts leaders, such as Julian Zugazagoitia, Raechell Smith and Sherry Leedy, in this diary-like tale about fictional artist Lee J. Ross and her artist friends as they struggle with Ross’s conceptual art project about envy. Music is by Ssion, Kirstin Paludan and Jeff Freling. For more information, visit www.judithglevy.com

Pictured: Judith G. Levy and Jaimie Warren arguing in a scene from "NV in KC: A Story About Artists and Envy in Kansas City," still from film.

Sept. 26: Anna Von Mertens

Sponsored by the fiber department

Textile artist Anna Von Mertens draws inspiration from the worlds of craft, conceptual art and modernist painting. She explores avenues of history and patterns in nature, interpreting the data into intricate, hand-dyed and hand-stitched fabric works.

Von Mertens received her B.A. degree from Brown University in 1995 and earned an M.F.A. degree from the California College of the Arts in 2000. She is the recipient of a 2010 United States Artists Simon Fellowship and a 2007 Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Biennial Award.

Her recent exhibitions include the 2013 Rijswijk Textile Biennial, Netherlands; 40 under 40: Craft Futures at the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Renwick Gallery, Washington, D.C.; a commissioned work for Ballroom Marfa, Texas; and the 2012 deCordova Biennial, Lincoln, Mass. Von Mertens’ work is in the permanent collections of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts; the Berkeley Art Museum, California; the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Renwick Gallery, Washington, D.C.; and the Museum of Art at the Rhode Island School of Design.

Her work is currently on view at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts as part of the exhibition “Uncontainable Portraits,” and her series “Migrations, Invasions, Plagues and Empires” is currently on view at the Boston Center for the Arts. She lives and works in New Hampshire. For more information, visit www.annavonmertens.com.

Pictured: "Bacchus's aura, after Caravaggio," Anna Von Mertens, 2009, hand-dyed, hand-stitched cotton, 39.75 inches by 33 inches.

Oct. 3: Christian Rattemeyer

Sponsored by the painting department

Christian Rattemeyer is the Harvey S. Shipley Miller associate curator in the department of drawings at The Museum of Modern Art in New York. At MoMA, he has organized the exhibitions "Lines, Grids, Stains, Words" (2007); "Compass in Hand: Selections from The Judith Rothschild Foundation Contemporary Drawings Collection" (2009); "Projects 95: Runa Islam" (2011); and "Alighiero Boetti: Game Plan" (2012), with the Museo Reina Sofia and the Tate Modern.
 
From 2003 to 2007, Rattemeyer was curator at Artists Space in New York City. He has published widely on contemporary art and contributes regularly to art magazines including Parkett, Texte zur Kunst and Artforum. His most recent book is "Exhibiting the New Art: 'Op Losse Schroeven' and 'When Attitudes Become Form' 1969" (2010). Rattemeyer has taught at several art schools and universities, including the M.F.A. program of the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, as well as at the School of Visual Arts, Parsons The New School for Design and the Rhode Island School of Design. He holds an M.A. degree from the Free University in Berlin and is a Ph.D. candidate at Columbia University.

Pictured: Christian Rattemeyer

Oct. 10: Ellen Ziegler

Sponsored by the printmaking department

Ellen Ziegler is an artist working in Seattle. She is also a graphic designer and teacher.
 
Ziegler works with mirrored glass, tar paper, cyanotype and other experimental materials. Her practice includes drawing, sculpture, assemblage and artist's books. 
 
She has been featured in solo and group shows throughout the United States and in Europe, including Seattle, Los Angeles, Miami, San Francisco, New York, London, and Sofia, Bulgaria, where she was represented in the 2011 Sofia Biennale. 
 
Ziegler's artist's books are in collections at the Brooklyn Art Library, Brooklyn, N.Y.; Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, Calif.; Carleton College, Northfield, Minn.; Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.; Mills College, Oakland, Calif; Ringling College of Art and Design, Sarasota, Fla.; Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J.; The Brand Libraries, Glendale, Calif.; University of Washington, Seattle, Wash.; and Yale University, New Haven, Conn.
 
She has lectured and taught at the University of Washington School of Art; University of Guanajuato, Mexico; Cornish College of the Arts; the School of Visual Concepts; Seattle Academy of Arts and Sciences; Whitman College, Walla Walla, WA; and at the 2011 Sofia Biennale, Sofia, Bulgaria under the sponsorship of the U.S. Department of State and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts.
 
For more information, visit www.ellenziegler.com.
 

Pictured: "Body Double series, #1," Ellen Ziegler, 2012, acrylic and metallic pigment on tarpaper, 36 inches by 48 inches.

Oct. 24: Stuart Hinds

Sponsored by the art history department

Stuart Hinds is the director of special collections at the Miller Nichols Library at the University of Missouri – Kansas City.  He received his Master of Library and Information Science degree from the University of Iowa in 1994 and has been a special collections/local history librarian in the Kansas City region since that time. He is a founding partner of the Gay and Lesbian Archive of Mid-America, a collaborative collecting initiative between the UMKC University Libraries and the Kansas City Museum.

Utilizing research drawn primarily from the collections in the Gay and Lesbian Archive of Mid-America, Hinds' lecture will focus on how female impersonation has been a consistent thread in the fabric of Kansas City’s rich theatrical tradition. In addition, attention will be given to the reaction of audiences to practitioners of this alternative performing art and how, over time, it ranged from absolute adoration to complete marginalization. The unique qualities of several legendary Kansas City’s female impersonators will be examined, as well as how some of the characteristics of local performers reflected national trends.

Pictured: Stuart Hinds

Oct. 31: Randy Regier

Sponsored by the H&R Block Artspace at KCAI

Randy Regier is a contemporary visual artist living in Wichita, Kan. He has exhibited his sculptures, objects and installations in a number of solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States. Regier’s work primarily pulls from 1950s and 1960s ephemera, with a focus on retro-inspired toys and their packaging. He creates his toys from salvaged parts and pieces from vintage household, scientific and industrial parts.

Regier’s travelling installation “NuPenny” has been moving throughout the United States since 2010. Showing up in vacant storefronts, NuPenny appears to be a full-functioning toy store, filled with Regier’s toys. Although the lights are always on in the building, the doors are always locked. Viewers can only look in at the all gray-scale store scene. After a few months, the installation is taken down and reinstalled in a new location.

Regier received his B.F.A. degree from Kansas State University in 2003 and earned an M.F.A. degree from Maine College of Art in 2007.

Pictured: “American Battery Using Astronaut,” Randy Regier, 2004, steel, mixed media, handmade cardboard box and inkjet on paper, clear plastic, 12 inches by 6 inches by 5 inches.
 

Nov 7: Lisa Saltzman — Retro spectacles: on the fictions of contemporary art photography

Sponsored by the School of Liberal Arts

Lisa Saltzman is professor of history of Art at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, where she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in modern and contemporary art and theory. Saltzman received a bachelor’s degree from Princeton University in 1988 and a Ph.D. degree from Harvard University in 1994. She has received fellowships from the DAAD, the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study, the Clark Art Institute, and the Guggenheim Foundation.   

Saltzman is the author of "Anselm Kiefer and Art after Auschwitz" (1999) and "Making Memory Matter: Strategies of Remembrance in Contemporary Art" (2006). She is also the co-editor, with Eric Rosenberg, of "Trauma and Visuality in Modernity" (2006). Drawing on materials from her new book, "Daguerreotypes: Fugitive Subjects, Contemporary Objects," forthcoming with the University of Chicago Press, Saltzman will talk about the aesthetics and ethics of contemporary art photography. Among the artists she will discuss are Jeff Wall, James Casebere, Thomas Demand, Gregory Crewdson and An-My Lê.

 Pictured: Lisa Saltzman

Nov 14: Satch Hoyt

Co-sponsored by H&R Block Artspace at KCAI

Berlin-based, international artist Satch Hoyt creates immersive installations and sculptures. With experience as a sound composer and musician, Hoyt often uses sound to create a multi-sensory experience within his artwork.

Hoyt's recent exhibitions and projects include "Newtopia The State of Human Rights" (2012), Kazerne Dossin Museum, Mechlen, Belgium; "Thrown Together" (2012), Nomad Gallery, Brussels, Belgium; "The Record Touring" (2011), Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, New York; "Nomadic Settlers" (2011), Bethanien, Berlin, Germany; and "The Art is A Combat Sport" (2011), Musum of Fine Arts, Calais, France.

Hoyt has recorded sound and music projects with Louise Bourgeois, Grace Jones and other artists. He is a member of Greg Tate's band, Burnt Sugar. For more information, visit www.satchhoyt.com.

Pictured: "Say It Loud!," Satch Hoyt, 2004, 500 books, white metal staircase and microphone with four speakers, wall text; dimensions variable.

Nov 21: Ross Sawyers

Sponsored by the photography and digital filmmaking departments

Ross Sawyers ('03 photography) began his career as an educator teaching photography at KCAI and then at the University of Washington in Seattle and the University of California-Riverside.

His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at venues including the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art; the Henry Art Museum in Seattle; and the Tacoma Art Museum in Washington. In 2011, he presented his third solo exhibition at Platform Gallery in Seattle.

 His work is included in numerous public and private collections, including the Hallmark Photographic Collection, the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago and the Joseph and Elaine Monsen Collection.
 
Sawyers holds an M.F.A. degree in photography from the University of Washington and a B.F.A. degree in photography from KCAI. He lives in Chicago, where he is an assistant professor of photography at Columbia College Chicago. For more information, visit www.rossawyers.com.
 
Pictured: Untitled, by Ross Sawyers