Arts Speaker Series and Alfred Art Walk 2023-2024

The Alfred Art Walk is a collaborative monthly venture created by the galleries in the Village of Alfred and on the campuses of Alfred University and Alfred State College in an effort to foster dialogue within the local arts communities. arts events, exhibitions, performances, pop-up events, and other arts events are welcomed to join the monthly event! contact artwalk@alfred.edu

September 21:

Arts Speaker Series: Theodore Randall International Chair in Sculpture Dimensional Studies Selva Aparicio
Selva Aparicio is an interdisciplinary artist exploring ideas of memory, intimacy, and the temporality of life through installations that celebrate the cyclicity of the natural world. Working with natureís ephemera, including cicada wings, oyster shells, and human cadavers, her praxis is an extended death ritual which foregrounds a unique reverence for the discarded. Capturing the meanings imbued in these materials and the rituals informing their significance and sentimentality enables both the facilitation of environmental, social, and political activism through art and the creation of outlets for the public navigation of grief and mourning in a world so defined by loss.  

Born and raised in the woods just outside of Barcelona, Spain, she found solace in nature from a young age and cultivated a profound interest in the ephemeral, as inspired by the natural world around her. She received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2015 and her MFA in sculpture from Yale University in 2017. Aparicio’s work has been shown internationally in solo and group exhibitions including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; The International Museum of Surgical Science, Chicago; Yale Center for British Art; Can Mario Museum, Spain; CRUSH Curatorial, New York; The Kyoto International Craft Center, Japan; Instituto Cervantes, New York; and the Centre de Cultura Contemporanea de Barcelona. She was awarded the JUNCTURE Fellowship in Art and International Human Rights in 2016, the Blair Dickinson Memorial Prize in 2017, and received a MAKER Grant from the Chicago Artist Coalition in 2020.She was also name done of the 2020 breakout artists in Chicago by NewCity Art, made the Short List for the 2021 Foundwork Artist Prize, and received the Pritzker Pucker Family Foundation Artadia Award in 2022. Her sculpture Auto-da-FÈ, exhibited at EXPO Chicago2023, was donated to the DePaul Art Museum with funds from the Inaugural Barbara Nessim Acquisition Prize. Sheís currently working on two outdoor permanent sculptures for both the Belgium Beaufort 2024 Triennale and the Heraclea Archeological Park in Italy. 

September Alfred Art Walk Events:
Reception 5-7pm Reuben Nakian: The Impassioned Gesture and Ashley Lyon: Super Real Alfred Ceramic Art Museum           
Reception 6-8pm A ticket to Senegal Where One Feels at home Robert C. Turner Gallery

October 19:
Arts Speaker Series: International Video Artists Panel
October Alfred Art Walk events:
Reception 6-8pm Robert C. Turner Gallery
Reception 6-8pm Ceramic Alumni Invitational Pottery Exhibition Cohen Gallery
Open Screening 7pm Holmes Auditorium
 
November 16:
Arts Speaker Series: Meg Boulton
November Alfred Art Walk events
Reception 6-8pm Robert C. Turner Gallery
December 21: Alfred Art Walk only- no speaker. The Art walk will feature community events and holiday sales
 
January 18:
Arts Speaker Series: Noel Anderson
Noel W Anderson received an MFA from Indiana University in Printmaking, and an MFA from Yale University in Sculpture. He is also Area Head of Printmaking in NYU’s Steinhardt Department of Art and Art Professions. 
Anderson utilizes print-media and arts-based-research to explore philosophical inquiry methodologies. He primarily focuses on the mediation of socially constructed images on identity formation as it relates to black masculinity and celebrity.  In 2018, Noel was awarded the NYFA artist fellowship grant and the prestigious Jerome Prize. His solo exhibition Blak Origin Moment debuted at the Contemporary Arts Center (Cincinnati) in February 2017 and travelled to the Hunter Museum of American Art in October 2019.  His first monograph, Blak Origin Moment, was also recently published. 

January Alfred Art Walk Events:
Reception: 6-8pm Change of Address: New Faculty in the SOAD Cohen Gallery

February 15:
Arts Speaker Series: Shing Yin Khor
February Alfred Art Walk Events:
8pm AU Dance Theater Miller Theatre
Reception 6-8pm Playthings Fosdick-Nelson Gallery

March 21:
Arts Speaker Series: Emily Sara
Emily Sara (she/her) is a queer, disabled, neurodivergent, artist, designer and Assistant Professor of Graphic Design at Virginia Commonwealth University. She specializes in teaching Accessible Design and her art and design practice appropriate the language of advertising and animation to discuss the Medical Industrial Complex (MIC) as well as the extent of social control over the disabled body. Emily is the founder of cripple, a publishing initiative which exclusively supports the endeavors of disabled artists and designers. She is also the founder of the design firm sick and tired  which has a focus on accessible design, consulting, and firing other disabled practitioners. Emily received her undergraduate degree from Boston University in Advertising and Art history and her MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art. She is the author of the article Fighting the Art World’s Ableism published by Hyperallergic. Aside from teaching full time, she is fervently working with other disabled artists and designers, fabricating a new series of sculptures when her body allows, applying for a service dog, and staying alive.

April 18:
Arts Speaker Series: International Randall Chair
April Alfred Art Walk Events:
Open Screening 7pm Holmes Auditorium