John Paoletti received his Ph.D in art history from Yale University. He taught the history of Italian Renaissance art and of the art of the twentieth century at Wesleyan University from 1972 to 2009, having previously taught at Bryn Mawr College and Dartmouth College. He was a William R. Kenan Professor of the Humanities at Wesleyan from 2005 until his retirement. He received the Binswanger Prize for Excellence in Teaching at Wesleyan in 1997 and the Distinguished Teaching of Art History Award from the College Art Association in 2003. He was a Fellow at the School of Historical Studies, Institute of Advanced Study, Princeton in the spring of 2001 and Visiting Professor at the Villa I Tatti, Harvard's Center for Renaissance Studies in Florence, in the late fall of 2008. He is currently serving as a member of the Committee on Prints and Drawings at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. From 1996-2000 he was the editor-in-chief of The Art Bulletin, the journal of record in art history in the United States. He served as guest curator for exhibitions at the Wadsworth Atheneum and the Yale Center for British Art, as well as at Wesleyan. He lectured on a number of occasions at the Metropolitan Museum and for the Friends of Florence. He is also a lecturer for Smithsonian tours.

His book, Michelangelo's David: Florentine History and Civic Identity, was published in 2015; it uses the popular culture and civic history of Florence to open new ways of interpreting the David. He is the co-author with Gary Radke of Art in Renaissance Italy, now in its fourth edition. With Roger Crum he is the co-editor of and contributing author to Renaissance Florence: a Social History, (New York, 2006). He has contributed catalogue essays for exhibitions at the Walker Art Center, the National Gallery of Art and the Nürnberg Kunsthalle. He has contributed articles on Italian sculpture and Medici patronage to a number of essay collections and festschriften, and to The Art Bulletin, the Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen, Artibus et Historiae, Pantheon, and Renaissance Quarterly. He is currently at work on Medici patronage during the fifteenth century and on a monograph on the contemporary German artist Georg Baselitz.

This lecture is presented and funded by KSU SGA Fine Arts Fee.

Michelangelo, David (detail), 1501–1504, marble, Florence, Galleria dell'Accademia

Casey V. Westbrook is the founder and CEO of a non-profit artist collective, Carbon Arts, with satellite spaces in Detroit and Pittsburgh. He currently resides in Pittsburgh, undertaking the development of the metal arts program at Rivers of Steel/Carrie Furnaces, a national historic landmark, and host to the International Sculpture Conference, scheduled for the fall of 2016.

His work is practice based; informed by process, materiality and community. Material relevancy and synthesis, and reproduction without replication are key components to his work. Westbrook has been involved in the development of different foundry innovations in the U.S. and Europe, most notably a 25-ton iron casting project with artist Matthew Barney.

Westbrook received his BFA in Sculpture from the University of West Georgia in 2004 and an MFA from Kansas State University in 2007.

This lecture is presented and funded by KSU SGA Fine Arts Fee.

Born in upstate New York, Tamie Beldue is a contemporary American artist focused in mixed media drawings. Beldue received a BFA at the Columbus College of Art & Design and earned her MFA at the University of Cincinnati. Her work has been exhibited nationally in group and solo exhibitions in notable galleries and museums.

Through drawing, compiled layers of diligent perception are rendered to depict an image of a complex individual. The model's independent thoughts and feelings are expressed through their body language in either fleeting or gradual changes. Perhaps a transitory interruption in the rise and fall of breath, or the disappearance of a bone that was once pressing against the skin – these subtle nonverbal clues, instabilities, and movements are recorded over time with the intention to build an illusionary space of breathable air in which an inhale could be palpable. Beldue, as well, also approaches each juncture with fluctuating perceptions demonstrating that reality is fundamentally immeasurable; therefore, the accumulation of marks presented extends the work beyond traditional portraiture discussing contemporary social contexts through distinct bodies of work.

Artist website: www.tamiebeldue.com

This lecture is presented and funded by KSU SGA Fine Arts Fee.

"Portrait of Another Butterfly", graphite, watercolor, pastel, cold wax, 2015, 40x40"

Bob Mueller is an Associate Professor and runs the Printmaking Program at the University of Florida in the School of Art and Art History.His earlier work is the result of wilderness experiences in exotic locations like Iceland. His present work concerns itself with the stewardship of his and other peoples homesteads.

This lecture is presented and funded by KSU SGA Fine Arts Fee.

"Wetlands", 9 x 15, 2014, Muslin, latex house paint, bamboo, zip-ties. Photo by Patrick Grimsby

In her work, Haley Bates is drawn to functional, often archaic forms and objects whose design is dictated by use. She often reinterprets common objects that often function as cultural signifiers or indicators, reflecting associations concerning class structures and social status (the silver spoon, the chandelier). Through processes of hybridization, reconfiguration, and material juxtapositions she undermine these assumptions in order to create forms that are both evocative and multivalent.

Originally from Texas, Haley received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of North Texas in 1994. She went on to receive her Master of Fine Arts Degree from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, MI in 2002. In 2003, she accepted a position as head of the Metalsmithing and Jewelry program at Colorado State University, where she is currently an Associate Professor of Art. Her work has been published in American Craft and Metalsmith magazines, and widely exhibited both nationally and internationally.

Artist website: www.haleybates.com

This lecture is presented and funded by KSU SGA Fine Arts Fee.

Michael Braley, Creative Director of Braley Design has over 20 years of experience in brand, print, and packaging design. His work has been recognized internationally and is in the permanent collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Chicago Athenaeum Museum of Architecture and Design, The Denver Art Museum and the Museum fur Kunst und Gewerbe in Hamburg, Germany. Clients have included Aéropostale, Alliance for American Manufacturing, AIGA, Effen Vodka, The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Future Partners, IBM, Pando Populus and Skadden. His work has appeared in numerous publications and exhibitions including: British Design and Art Direction, Cannes Design Lions, The Clio Awards, Graphis, Type Directors Club, Communication Arts, London International Awards, The Art Directors Club of New York, The One Show, and Print. Prior to moving to Lexington, Kentucky, Braley worked in New York (VSA Partners) and San Francisco (Cahan & Associates). He is currently serving on the advisory board of the Iowa State University, College of Design, and has taught typography at the California College of the Arts (CCA). Braley has lectured and led design workshops at universities and professional organizations around the nation.

Designer website: www.braleydesign.com

This lecture is presented and funded by KSU SGA Fine Arts Fee.

Pando Populus, Branding, 2015

Daniel Mirer is an artist / photographer who lives and works in New York. Mirer is both a practicing artist and a commercial architecture photographer with over 25 years of experience. His work is represented by Gallery Vassy in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. His on-going body of work Architor Space reconstructs masculine identity and role play, displaying the pageantry of the uniform in combination with architectural locations. These images examine traditional codes of representation of the uniform, and the institutions that govern them. Mirer is a graduate of Pratt Institute in New York (BFA) and holds an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles. His work is in the collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Sheldon Museum of Art, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX and the Dallas Contemporary Art Museum as well as many more. In his commercial work, he has photographed building exterior and interiors for the head quarters and offices of many companies such as Readers Digest, Rachel Ray Space for Tuller McNealus Feld, WGSN Fashion Magazine, the Sheldon Museum of Art, TD Bank New York and many more. Mirer has taught at Pratt Institute New York, FIT New York and the Tampere Polytechnic School of Art and media in Tampere, Finland.

Artist website: www.danielmirer.com

These events are presented and funded by KSU SGA Fine Arts Fee.

The Mark A. Chapman Gallery on the first floor of Willard Hall opened in 2005. Cheryl Mellenthin and Mark Chapman funded a complete renovation of the former Willard Hall Gallery, increasing the exhibition space to over 1,400 square feet along with 400 square feet dedicated to exhibition preparation and kitchen facilities. The Department of Art hosts BFA and MFA student exhibitions in the gallery as part of graduation requirements each semester. The technology friendly gallery serves not only exhibition purposes, but also provides a location for an active Visiting Artist lecture program.

"Pink Wall", Los Angeles, CA, 40x40" by visiting artist Daniel Mirer

Bryan Czibesz is an artist grounded in the tradition of object making who asks questions of authorship and authenticity through varying degrees of engagement and dislocation between the hand and material manipulation. Originally from Ohio, Bryan earned his MFA from San Diego State University and BA from Humboldt State University, and has shown his work in solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States and internationally, including the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, The Center for Craft, Creativity & Design, the Riga Porcelain Museum in Latvia, and the Ceramics Annual at Scripps College. He has taught at Arcadia University, Rowan University, and has been Artist-in-Residence at The Clay Studio in Philadelphia, the International Ceramics Studio in Kecskemét, Hungary, c.r.e.t.a. Rome, and the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He is currently Assistant Professor of Art in Ceramics at SUNY New Paltz.

This lecture is presented and funded by KSU SGA Fine Arts Fee.

Work by visiting artist Bryan Czibesz

Garry R. Bibbs is an Associate Professor and area head at the University of Kentucky where he has taught for 26 years and currently serves as the M.F.A. Graduate advisor.

He has expertise in sculpture and printmaking, earning his B.S. degree with honors in Arts Studio from Kentucky State University and M.F.A. from the University of Kentucky. From 1986-90, he was studio assistant to Chicago sculptor, Richard Hunt.

Bibbs has participated in numerous national and regional solo exhibitions and received a Ford Postdoctoral Fellowship from the National Academy of Sciences Washington, DC, the Al Smith Award in Sculpture/Outstanding Kentucky Artist and the NEA Southern Arts Federation Award/Outstanding Printmaker Award.

In addition, he has completed over 35 public art commissions throughout the eastern regional states. Some of his public work may be viewed at; the Frankfort KY New Transportation Building, Kentucky Center for African American Heritage, University of Kentucky Allied Health Professions and Sciences, Kentucky Commission on Human Rights, Urban League of greater Chattanooga office Building, Busey Bank, Champaign IL, and the National Afro-American Museum and Cultural Center.

Artist website: www.garrybibbsart.com

These events are presented and funded by KSU SGA Fine Arts Fee.

The Mark A. Chapman Gallery on the first floor of Willard Hall opened in 2005. Cheryl Mellenthin and Mark Chapman funded a complete renovation of the former Willard Hall Gallery, increasing the exhibition space to over 1,400 square feet along with 400 square feet dedicated to exhibition preparation and kitchen facilities. The Department of Art hosts BFA and MFA student exhibitions in the gallery as part of graduation requirements each semester. The technology friendly gallery serves not only exhibition purposes, but also provides a location for an active Visiting Artist lecture program.

"Stainless Wall Piece" by visiting artist Garry R. Bibbs

Joan Ryan's work investigates American legacy and the structure of narrative as a framework in painting and drawing. Using iconic images from advertising, media and historical, world events, her work is a reexamination of cultural myth and identity. Wistful images or symbols of innocence, presented in conjunction with props of modern day create an unnerving juxtaposition. This apposition speaks to the commodification of childhood, confronts our culture's selective memory and asks the viewer to relinquish mythologies of our past. Ryan's work challenges the notion of Collective Memory as static, acknowledges that events may be altered by time and questions the façade that masks the twenty-first century.

Ryan is an Associate Professor at The Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University. Her work has been shown extensively on the East Coast, as well as in Berlin, Germany, with solo shows at Soho 20 Gallery, NYC, Provincetown Museum, DADA Post, Berlin, A.I.R. Gallery, Brooklyn, NY and Smith College, MA. She has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Puffin Foundation and The Lillian Orlowsky/William Freed National Foundation; her work is represented in the Museum of Modern Art, Artist Files Archives, DeCordova Museum, Boston, Provincetown Museum and other collections.

Artist website: www.joanryanstudio.com

These events are presented and funded by KSU SGA Fine Arts Fee.

The Mark A. Chapman Gallery on the first floor of Willard Hall opened in 2005. Cheryl Mellenthin and Mark Chapman funded a complete renovation of the former Willard Hall Gallery, increasing the exhibition space to over 1,400 square feet along with 400 square feet dedicated to exhibition preparation and kitchen facilities. The Department of Art hosts BFA and MFA student exhibitions in the gallery as part of graduation requirements each semester. The technology friendly gallery serves not only exhibition purposes, but also provides a location for an active Visiting Artist lecture program.

"Summer Haze", 25x40, oil

Joel Slayton is Executive Director of ZERO1: the art and technology network. An internationally recognized artist, author, and researcher with over 35 years of expertise in art and technology, Slayton has been represented in over 100 international exhibitions. His art engages a wide range of media and technology focused on illuminating the possibilities of installation, performance, public art, urbanism, organizational systems and networks. He is the Founding Director of the San Jose State University CADRE Laboratory for New Media, an interdisciplinary academic program dedicated to experimental applications involving information technology and art. He was Academic Chair of the 2006 International Symposium of Electronic Art and Editor-In- Chief of the Leonardo-MIT Press Book Series from 1999-2005. He serves on the advisory board for ArsCitizen-Paris/San Francisco and the Sounding Board for Intercities, a program of the Global Cities Cultural Network and Quartier des Spectacles in Montreal and the National Film Board of Canada.

Artist website: http://zero1.org/about/staff/joel-slayton-executive-director

Part of the LASER (Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendezvous) speaker series http://dxmedialab.org/laser

This lecture is presented and funded by KSU SGA Fine Arts Fee.

Chung-Fan Chang is a visual artist and educator who explores and investigate in painting, works on paper, video, and wall installation. Her Kite series of work has been exhibited in galleries and museums nationally and internationally. The title "Kite" refers to the neon color fields in the abstract landscapes that serve as intruders to the surrounding. Intruders cross-examine how fluorescent and artificial colors affect our vision and how that effect can be a signifier of conflict in society. Through discovering and representing the beauty in her mind, Chang's work reflects the process of making, and identifies the visual metaphor of color and its significance in society. She was the 2013-14 Visual Arts Fellow at the Mississippi Arts Commission, and was the recipient of ThinkTank 7 Emerging Educator Fellowship. Recently, Chang exhibited her work at the Asian Cultural Center, Manhattan Art Gallery in New York, NY. She has co-curated exhibition Horizon Realm: Contemporary Art from Taiwan at Tenri Cultural Center in New York and Dollye M.E. Robinson Gallery in Jackson. Chang obtained MFA from Savannah College of Art and Design in the United States, and BFA from Taipei National University of the Arts in Taiwan. She is an Assistant Professor of Art at Stockton University in New Jersey.

Artist website: www.chungfanchang.com

The Mark A. Chapman Gallery on the first floor of Willard Hall opened in 2005. Cheryl Mellenthin and Mark Chapman funded a complete renovation of the former Willard Hall Gallery, increasing the exhibition space to over 1,400 square feet along with 400 square feet dedicated to exhibition preparation and kitchen facilities. The Department of Art hosts BFA and MFA student exhibitions in the gallery as part of graduation requirements each semester. The technology friendly gallery serves not only exhibition purposes, but also provides a location for an active Visiting Artist lecture program.

These events are presented and funded by KSU SGA Fine Arts Fee.

Detail View Eongher's Land, ink on wall, 2013, 40' x 15'

Jennifer Parker is an Associate Professor in the Department of Art, University of California, Santa Cruz. As founding Director of UCSC OpenLab Art + Science Research Center, Parker is actively engaged in art/sci projects from concept, design through completion in a variety of media and contexts. Parker's work has been presented nationally and internationally. She is the recipient of several grants, awards, and fellowships. Parker is Associate Professor and Chair of the Art Department at the UC Santa Cruz and faculty for the Digital Arts & New Media (DANM) program and runs the Mechatronics collaborative research group combining art, design, science and technology.

Artist website: http://art.ucsc.edu/faculty/jennifer-parker

Part of the LASER (Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendezvous) speaker series

http://dxmedialab.org/laser

This lecture is presented and funded by KSU SGA Fine Arts Fee.

UCSC OpenLab, Oceanic Scales, 2015

Marna Brauner is Professor Emeritus of Art and Design (1989-2014) at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, specializing in surface design. Prior teaching included the University of Kansas and a visiting appointment at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She received her MFA in textiles, with distinction, from California College of Arts and Crafts, 1977 and her BFA in Visual Art from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 1974. She exhibits her work nationally and internationally in both solo and group shows, most recently at the Silk Museum, Hangzhou, China, Gyodong Art Centre, Jeonju, South Korea, the Hong Kong Design Institute and the Kaohsiung (Taiwan) Museum of Fine Arts. Brauner has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Wisconsin Arts Board and the Milwaukee Artists Foundation. Her work was featured in the books, The Surface Designer's Art and Celebrating the Stitch: Contemporary Embroidery of North America, as well as Fiberarts Magazine, and The Surface Design Journal.

This lecture is presented and funded by KSU SGA Fine Arts Fee.