There is always something happening in the School of Art + Design. Join us for guest lectures, conferences, and exhibitions. Most of these are free and open to the public. You can join our email list to receive the weekly Upcoming Events email and stay in the know about the latest happenings.
4:00 p.m.
University of Oregon Visiting Artist Lecture Series Presented by the Department of Art and Center for Art Research
Naama Tsabar’s practice fuses elements from sculpture, music, performance, and architecture. Her interactive works expose hidden spaces and systems, reconceive gendered narratives, and shift the viewing experience to one of active participation. Tsabar draws attention to the muted and unseen by propagating sound through space and sculptural form. Between sculpture and instrument, form, and sound, Tsabar’s work lingers on the intimate, sensual and corporeal potentials within this transitional state. Collaborating with local communities of female identifying and gender non-conforming performers, Tsabar challenges the canon of mastery by writing new feminist and queer histories of mastery. In her talk, Tsabar will discuss interactivity within the exhibition realm, the conception, and the use of various performative elements in her work and a feminist approach to performance and community.
Naama Tsabar (b. 1982, Israel) lives and works in New York. She received her MFA from Columbia University in 2010. Solo exhibitions and performances of Tsabar have been presented at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York), Museum of Art and Design (New York), The High Line Art (New York), Nasher Museum (Durham, NC), Kunsthaus Baselland (Switzerland), Palais De Tokyo (Paris), Prospect New Orleans, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, The Herziliya Museum for Contemporary Art in Israel, MARTE-C (El Salvador), CCA Tel Aviv (Israel), Faena Buenos Aires, Frieze Projects New York, Kasmin (New York), Paramo Gallery (Guadalajara), Dvir Gallery (Israel and Brussels), Spinello Projects (Miami) Shulamit Nazarian (Los Angeles), The Bass Museum (Miami), Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art (Connecticut). Her work has been featured in publications including ArtForum, Art In America, ArtReview, ARTnews, The New York Times, New York Magazine, Frieze, Bomb Magazine, Art Asia Pacific, Wire, and Whitewall, among others.
Lectures are also live streamed and archived on YouTube.
4:00 p.m.
University of Oregon Visiting Artist Lecture Series Presented by the Department of Art and Center for Art Research
“When I first started adding knitting to my sculpture, I was excited that I could quickly customize a ubiquitous material and apply it to sculpture as a stand-in for the body. It was a skin paused in motion. I could move away from a space that felt stratified and stale; however, through a number of important texts and exhibitions that dove into the archive, I clearly saw there was a lineage of marginalized artists that had come before me working in the same space without recognition. The space of Craft is not without its own difficulties and problems; they persist. But being able to invest in material, process and a discipline has been an antidote and nourishing place for making during the uncertainty of Covid.” Jim Drain, 2023
Jim Drain was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1975 and attended the Rhode Island School of Design (1994-1998 BFA, Sculpture). Drain was a member of Forcefield, a collective that merged music, performance film and installation into one. Forcefield was active from 1996 to 2002 and was part of the Whitney Biennial, 2002. Drain has had solo exhibitions at the University of Florida; Locust Projects, Miami; and the Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas, Austin. Drain has participated in group exhibitions at MOCA, LA; the Fabric Workshop, Philadelphia; Serpentine Gallery, London; Depart Foundation, Rome; and the 7th Bienniale d’Art Contemporain de Lyon. Drain was one of two recipients of the 2005 Baloise Prize and was recognized with artist Bhakti Baxter for creating “best public art projects in the nation” by Americans for the Arts in 2015.
This lecture is made possible by the Gilkey Foundation. Lectures are also live streamed and archived on YouTube.
9:00 a.m.–6:00 p.m.
Following the devastating 2020 wildfires in Oregon, Sarah Grew collected black coals from the fires that she then used through extensive research and experimentation, to create carbon prints of recorded images of the forests themselves. Her process and its resulting prints, with their frilled edges and torn emulsion echo the way natural fire cycles can surmount devastation to provide nutrients to the soil, force a pinecone to disperse its seeds, or shape the landscape, in contrast to the extreme intensity and size of the fires that are now common. The photographs show us the beauty being lost to human negligence and the climate crisis. Printed as lantern slides, the forest memory is held captive on sheets of glass accentuating both the fragility of life and our precarious position. Hung at various heights the viewer is invited to move through the Ghost Forest, witnessing a range of natural elements.
The exhibition at the LaVerne Krause Gallery will also include Jon Bellona’s sound installation Wildfire—a 48-foot-long speaker array that plays back a wave of fire sounds at speeds of actual wildfires. An instructor of audio production in the School of Music and Dance, Bellona hopes the installation will allow viewers to embody the devastating spread of wildfires through an auditory experience.
Open hours: Mon–Thurs, 9 am–5 pm. Additional open hours Friday April 28, and during the weekend, April 29–30. Opening reception and panel discussion: “Native Ecologies” on Indigenous histories and approaches to fire management, knowledge production, and ecological stewardship Tuesday, April 25, 4–6 pm. Closing reception and CSWS 2023 Acker-Morgen Memorial Lecture by invited scholar Michelle Murphy, May 2, 4:30-6:30 pm.
Sponsored by the Center for the Study of Women in Society and the UO Environment Initiative.
4:00 p.m.
University of Oregon Visiting Artist Lecture Series Presented by the Department of Art and Center for Art Research
“I am interested in the observation and depiction of everyday objects and occurrences, especially when they subtly suggest contradictions - a perception of time that feels both temporary and lasting and a sense of place that feels both familiar and foreign. I will talk about my work and my background as a printmaker. I will also discuss how printmaking continues to inform the way I make my recent sculptural works.” Yoonmi Nam, 2023
Yoonmi Nam received her MFA degree from the Rhode Island School of Design and BFA degree from Hong-Ik University in Seoul, Korea. She was awarded residencies at Mokuhanga Innovation Laboratory in Japan three times (2004, 2012, 2019) to study traditional Japanese woodblock printing techniques and is the recipient of the Keiko Kadota Award for Advancement of Mokuhanga. She has participated in artist residencies at Brandywine Workshop and Archives in Philadelphia, Frans Masereel Centrum in Belgium, Kala Art Institute in California, Vermont Studio Center, and a 3-year studio residency at Studios Inc. in Kansas City. Her work is in the collections of the RISD Museum, RI; Spencer Museum of Art, KS; and the Hawai’i State Art Museum, HI; among others, and has shown her work in over 20 solo exhibitions and 180 group exhibitions both nationally and internationally. Yoonmi is a professor of printmaking at the University of Kansas.
Lectures are also live streamed and archived on YouTube.
4:00 p.m.
University of Oregon Visiting Artist Lecture Series Presented by the Department of Art and Center for Art Research
Julia Fish will present a selected overview of earlier and recent paintings, works on paper, site-generated projects and exhibitions. The artist will also reflect on her long-standing practice of maintaining a “studio notebook” and within the context of recently authored, published contributions to exhibition catalogues of her work as well as the work of other artists.
Inclusively and theoretically, Julia Fish’s work can be characterized as both site-generated and context-specific: in temporary projects / installations, and in the on-going sequence of paintings and works on paper developed in response to a close examination of living and working within her home and studio, a 1922 brick storefront in Chicago. Research interests include related disciplines of architectural history, theory, and music notation. Fish completed BFA and MFA degrees in Oregon and Maryland, and has lived and worked in Chicago since 1985. Curated exhibitions include: The Renaissance Society, University of Chicago; Galerie Remise, Bludenz, Austria; 2010, the Whitney Biennial; and ten-year solo survey : bound by spectrum, DePaul Art Museum, Chicago, 2019-2020. Her work is included in collections of the Art Institute of Chicago; Denver Art Museum; Museum of Modern Art, New York, among others. Fish is represented by Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago, and David Nolan Gallery, New York.
Lectures are also live streamed and archived on YouTube
4:00–6:00 p.m.
The School of Art + Design’s annual end-of-year exhibition, Spring Storm, celebrates the culminating work by graduating senior students completing degrees in Art, Art & Technology, and Product Design. Engaging a broad range of art and design practices, the work reflects the pluralism of contemporary culture and the dynamism of their curiosity and engagement.
Spring Storm marks a pivotal moment for graduating seniors, celebrating their college experience and launching them into lifetime of creative thinking and innovative action.