Alfred University expanded media faculty to present at Oct. 13 Artists’ Speaker Series

ALFRED, NY—The Weekly Wednesday Artists’ Speaker Series at Alfred University continues on Wednesday, Oct. 13, at 7 p.m. with presentations by three faculty members from the School of Art and Design’s Division of Expanded Media.

In the Weekly Wednesday Artists’ Speaker Series, faculty and staff in the School of Art and Design/Performing Arts Division, as well as guest artists, present short talks on their creative practice outside of the classroom. The series—offered both in-person and virtually—aims to engage the Alfred community by creating a unique sharing space focusing on the arts. The Oct. 13 event will feature Joseph Scheer ’84, professor of printmaking and director of the Institute for Electronic Arts; Eric Souther M.F.A. ’11, assistant professor of video art, and Maria Villanueva, visiting assistant professor in expanded media-animation.

Scheer, who earned a B.F.A. degree from Alfred University in 1984, is a Fulbright Scholar and co-founder of the Institute for Electronic Arts in the School of Art and Design. He was recently elected vice president of the International Academic Printmaking Alliance (IAPA) and served as a panelist for the Fulbright Scholar Program for Mexico and Central America from 2015-17. His current works, which span print media, video, and web based projects, use technology to re-examine nature through interpretive collecting and visual recording. This past summer, a large selection of his work was featured in: China’s First Printmaking Festival and Exhibition, Guanlan Museum of Printmaking, Guanlan, China and the POP Gallery, Queensland College of Art, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia. There are two notable books published about his work: Night Visions, the Secret Designs of Moths (Prestel) and Night Flyers (Nexus Press).

Souther, who earned an M.F.A. degree in electronic integrated arts from Alfred University in 2011, is a new media artist who draws from a multiplicity of disciplines, including anthropology, linguistics, ritual, critical theory, and New Materialism. He develops video instruments that investigate technological and cultural ecologies, agency, and emergence, and looks for new ways of seeing beyond the seductive qualities of an image, and to find unseen connections that help us understand our digital and non-digital existence. Souther’s work has been featured nationally and internationally at venues such as the Museum of Art and Design, New York City; Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY; and the Museum of Art, Zhangzhou, China. In 2016, he won the Juried Award for Time-Based at the international art competition ArtPrize.

Villanueva earned a B.F.A. degree from the Columbus College of Art and Design in Ohio in 2009, and an MFA in interdisciplinary arts from the University of North Texas in Denton, TX, in 2021. Her work has been exhibited in national juried exhibitions in Mississippi, New York, Ohio, and Texas. Some recent works have been exhibited at Bath House Cultural Center, Umbrella Gallery, Mary Tomas Gallery, Texas Discovery Gardens in Dallas, and Charles Adams Studio Project in Lubbock.

The Oct. 13 installment in the Weekly Wednesday Artists’ Speaker Series will be held at 7 p.m. in Holmes Auditorium, Harder Hall. For those who prefer to take in the presentation virtually, it will be offered via Zoom.

Future talks in the series will feature faculty/staff speakers from the various divisions in the School of Art and Design and Performing Arts: Art History (Oct. 20, 7 p.m.), and Performing Arts (Oct. 27, 7 p.m.). The remainder of the Fall 2021 semester and the Spring 2022 semester will feature presentations by guest artists.