Visiting Artists Program
This student-run program brings an outstanding roster of local, national and international artists to PAFA each semester for lectures, critiques, performances and workshops. The program exposes students and the public to a range of artistic approaches, and fosters discussion about contemporary art and ideas.
The Visiting Artists Program series is free to the public!
Summer 2016 lectures are 6 - 7 p.m. in the Historic Landmark Building auditorium. For an archive of past Visiting Artists Program speakers, click here.
Summer 2016
June 29
Mark Shetabi was born in New York and lived for five years in Tehran, Iran. His family returned to the United States in 1979, on the eve of the Iranian Revolution. The experience of being between cultures is an enduring subtext of his artistic practice. Shetabi received his MFA in painting from PAFA and is a recipient of a 2002 Pew Fellowship. He teaches at Tyler School of Art where he is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Painting, Drawing, and Sculpture.
Shetabi’s work has been included in numerous solo and group exhibitions including: White Columns, Heckscher Museum, Tiger Strikes Asteroid, and Jeff Bailey Gallery in New York; Ratio3 in San Francisco; Western Bridge in Seattle; Locks Gallery, Woodmere Art Museum, and Project Room in Philadelphia; and the Smithsonian National Building Museum in Washington D.C. His work has been written about in publications including Art in America, The New York Times, Time Out/New York, San Francisco Arts Quarterly, The Boston Globe, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and others.
July 6
Pat Boyer’s work has been shown in solo exhibitions and group exhibitions throughout the United States and in Europe and is included in private collections around the world.
Born in Detroit, Boyer earned her BFA and Certificate from the College of Creative Studies in Detroit, and her MFA from PAFA. She paints and teaches privately in Norristown, Pennsylvania, where she keeps a studio among a close painting community. Her exhibitions abroad include Gallery Scalarte in Verona, Italy; Gallery Campo S. Piero in Padova, Italy; and La Loggia Gallery in Assisi, Italy. In the United States, they include Brenda Taylor Gallery, New York City; Snyderman Gallery in Philadelphia; and Charles Allis Decorative Arts Museum in Milwaukee.
July 13
Duncan Hewitt is a sculptor. He remakes and replaces things that are important to him. They reappear as touchstones that exist in real and imagined space and are both sculptures and objects. Most are made of carved and painted wood.
Hewitt was born in New York City in 1949 and grew up on Long Island. He attended Colby College and graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania. He lives and works in the Portland area of Maine. His work has been shown with prominent 20th century artists such as Joseph Beuys, Joseph Cornell, and Isamu Noguchi and 21st century artists including Susan Collis, Vik Muniz, and Nina Katchadourian.
He is associated with the ICON Gallery of Contemporary Art in Brunswick, Maine. In addition to his ongoing body of work he has completed five public art projects.
July 20
Steve Locke is a Boston-based artist, raised in Detroit, Michigan.
He received a BS in 1984 from Boston University, a BFA in 1997 and an MFA in 2001 from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. He attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2002. He has received grants from The Pollock-Krasner Foundation, The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, The Art Matters Foundation, and the LEF Foundation Contemporary Work Fund Grant.
His solo exhibition, there is no one left to blame, was curated by Helen Molesworth for the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston. This show traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit and was on view through July 2014, and coincided with the publication of the artist's first monograph by the same title. He is represented by Samsøñ in Boston.
He has had solo exhibitions with Mendes Wood in Sao Paulo, Brasil and a solo project at VOLTA 5 in Basel, Switzerland. He has been included in group shows in Boston, Los Angeles New York, Philadelphia, Savannah, Seattle, Sao Paulo and Beijing. His work has been reviewed in Artforum, Art in America, Art New England, Juxtapoz, The Boston Globe, and The New Yorker. He writes the blog, artandeverythingafter.com, and is an Associate Professor at Massachusetts College of Art and Design.
August 3
Becky Suss places at the center of her practice the inconsistency of memory and the potential for the inaccuracies of recollections to reveal greater emotional truths than even the most meticulously documented accounts of the past.
Suss was born in Philadelphia, where she currently lives and works. She holds a BA from Williams College and an MFA from the University of California, Berkeley. In 2013, she also attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Recent exhibition venues include The Institute of Contemporary Art and the Fleisher/Ollman Gallery in Philadelphia, and The Berman Museum in Collegeville, Pennsylvania.
August 10
Matt Blackwell received his BFA from the Portland School of Art in Portland, Maine, participated in the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and received his MFA from the University of North Carolina in Greensboro. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship (2015-2016) and a Purchase Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2006). Residencies include Yaddo; Sculpture Space in Utica, New York; Vermont Studio Center; Triangle Arts Association; and Art Lot in Brooklyn. Blackwell is represented by the Edward Thorp Gallery, New York, where he has had six solo shows and has been included in numerous group exhibitions.