From Kenyon News - October 11, 2018
Kenyon welcomes a number of accomplished artists and designers to campus this fall as part of the Mesaros Visiting Artist lecture series, made possible by the Mesaros Art Fund. Established through a generous gift from Paul and Laura Mesaros, the fund enhances the College’s art program through guest lectures, visiting artists and teachers, and special exhibitions.
This year’s lecture series highlights varieties of design, from public art commissions to book and information design.
“We decided as a department on a thematic invitation to artists involved in some aspect of design, mostly in the hopes of incorporating some of those design skills into our classes,” said Professor of Art Claudia Esslinger, who is chair of the Department of Art. The dividing line between what is considered art and design is “fuzzy,” she explained, and “some would even say there is no line at all, but a continuum, based on intended audience.” Where the studio artist can work more independently, with personal goals for content, the designer often works with others who have commissioned the work, Esslinger said.
“Studio artists certainly use design principles in their work and designers use the same creativity and tools in their work,” Esslinger added. “There is more that unites than divides us.”
Events in the 2018–19 Mesaros Visiting Artist series are free and open to the public. They include:
- Tuesday, Sept. 11: Marela Zacarias ’00 spoke about her work creating large scale, three-dimensional installations that merge the processes of painting and sculpture. Her presentation yielded insight into her process and content, and the extent to which her research into the politics and history of an installation site influences the patterns and shapes that flow throughout her work.
- Thursday, Sept. 27: Barbara Tetenbaum, a visual artist and founder of the artist book imprint Triangular Press, gave an illustrated lecture on her work, which uses books, print, installation and animation to explore the act of reading.
- Wednesday, Oct. 3: Odette England spoke about her need to undertake photographic acts of self-reflection and self-erasure and to reconstruct personal spaces. England’s photographic work revolves around autobiographical recollection, examining the value of the family snapshot and its challenging, often contradictory relationship to memory.
- Thursday, Oct. 18, at 7 p.m.: Jae Rhim Lee speaks in room 220 of Horvitz Hall. Lee, a visual artist, designer and researcher, proposes unorthodox relationships between the mind, body, and self and the built and natural environment. Her work follows a research methodology which includes self-examination, transdisciplinary immersion and dialogue, and DIY design, ultimately taking the form of living units, furniture, wearables, recycling streams, and personal and social interventions.
- Wednesday, Oct. 24, at 7 p.m.: Terike Haapoja speaks in the Gund Gallery’s Community Foundation Theater. Haapoja is a visual artist whose work encompasses installation art, photography, writing and editing. With a specific focus on encounters with nature, death and other species, Haapoja’s work investigates the existential and political boundaries of our world and raises questions about how different structures of exclusion and discrimination function as foundations for identity and culture.
- Thursday, Nov. 8, at 11:10 a.m.: Adam Lucas ’07 and Allison O’Flinn ’06 speak in Horvitz Hall, room 220. O’Flinn, a graphic designer and educator, will describe the evolution of her design career and how she enriches her work with her experience in the nonprofit sector, combining her passion for civic engagement with creative management and innovation. Lucas, an assistant professor of graphic design at the Kansas City Art Institute, will discuss his current interest in mindfulness and human-centered design.
- Monday, Dec. 3, at 7 p.m.: Paul Kahn’71 speaks in the Gund Gallery’s Community Foundation Theater. Kahn specializes in solving large information problems, shaping and designing collections of digital information to improve user experience. He studies the threshold of acceptance, the patterns that connect people to the information they need. Kahn teaches in the information design and visualization and the experience design MFA programs at Northeastern University.
—Ben Hunkler ’20