Artist Talks

Maine College of Art & Design's Artist Talks provide our community with invaluable dialogue and exchanges of ideas within creative disciplines. Our mission is to create a dynamic engagement between young and established creatives working across the fields of Art, Craft, Design, and academic areas of cultural production. We aim to amplify Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) and LGBTQ voices through a balanced program. All viewings are free and open to the public on a space-available basis.

Spring 2023 Schedule

Josephine Halvorson

Presented by the Painting department
Thursday, February 2 (11:45am-12:45pm)
Osher Hall

Josephine Halvorson (she/her) makes art that foregrounds firsthand experience and takes the form of painting, sculpture, and printmaking.

Born in Brewster, Massachusetts, she studied at The Cooper Union (BFA 2003), Yale Norfolk (2002), and Columbia University (MFA 2007). In 2021, she was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship. Halvorson is the recipient of major international residencies and fellowships: The US Fulbright to Vienna, Austria (2003-4), the Harriet Hale Woolley at the Fondation des États-Unis in Paris, France (2007-8), and was the first American pensionnaire at the French Academy in Rome at the Villa Medici (2014-15). Her work has been exhibited internationally and is represented by Sikkema Jenkins & Co., NY, and Peter Freeman, Paris. Selected exhibitions include SECCA (2015), Storm King Art Center (2016), the ICA Boston Foster Prize Exhibition (2019-20), and Ríos Intermitentes, a group exhibition curated by Magdalena Campos-Pons as part of the Havana Bienale (2019). In 2021 she will have a solo exhibition at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, NM, where she was an artist in residence.

Halvorson’s work and practice have been written about extensively and she is a subject of Art21’s documentary series New York Close Up. She is Professor of Art and Chair of Graduate Studies in Painting at Boston University and lives in western Massachusetts.

Artist Website: https://www.josephinehalvorson.info/

Tommi Parrish

Presented by the Printmaking department
Tuesday, February 21 (8:30am-9:30am)
Osher Hall

Tommi Parrish (b. 1989, Melbourne) is a trans Australian cartoonist and painter living in Western Massachusetts. Their debut work, The Lie and How We Told It, won the 2019 Lambda Literary Award for the best LGBTQ graphic novel, was nominated for the Ignatz award, was featured in many best of 2018 lists, and translated into 11 languages worldwide.

Tommi was the 2020 recipient of the Center For Cartoon Studies Fellowship and their work has been showcased in The New Yorker, Granta Magazine, The New York Times, Pitchfork, Vice, and many more.

Artist Instagram: @tommi_pg

Christine Nguyen*

The Gary Ambrose Sculpture Series
Monday, February 27 (12:00-1:00pm)
Osher Hall

Christine Nguyen was born and raised in California and currently resides in Aurora, Colorado. She is a lover of animals, plants, and nature.

She received her B.F.A from California State University, Long Beach and M.F.A from University of California, Irvine. Exhibitions of her work have been shown nationally and internationally. Her works can be found in various collections such as the J.Paul Getty Museum Department of Photographs, Getty Research Institute, Armand Hammer Museum, Grunwald Center for Graphic Art, Los Angeles World Airports’ Collection, Cedars- Sinai in Los Angeles, CA; Burger Collection, Hong Kong; The Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT), Hanoi, Vietnam; Long Beach Museum of Art, Kleefeld Contemporary Art Museum in Long Beach, California; Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, Ohio; and Microsoft Collection.

She has been an Artist In Residence at Montello Foundation, NV ; Pacific Bonsai Museum, WA; Gyeongju Int. Residency Art Festa 2018, Korea; Theodore Payne Foundation, CA, BaikArt with Cemeti Art House, Indonesia; U.S Dept. of Interior- BLM Eastern interior AIR, Alaska; Wildfjords (WFAR), Iceland; Montalvo Art Center, CA; Tamarind Institute, NM; and the Headlands Center for the Arts, CA.

Artist Website: https://www.christinenguyen.art/

Funded through a generous gift from Dr. Edward M. Friedman '08 and Carole J. Friedman, in honor of Sculpture Professor Emeritus Gary Ambrose.

Karl Stevens

The Gene R. Cohen Charitable Foundation Series
Monday, March 20 (12:00-1:30pm)
Osher Hall

Karl Stevens is a graphic novelist and painter. His first book, Guilty, was published in 2005 with a grant from the Xeric Foundation. He is also the author of The Lodger (2010), The Winner (2018), and Penny: A Graphic Memoir (2021), which follows the exploits of Karl Stevens' most frequent subjects: his cat Penny. Penny veers from playfulness to a kind of bored bemusement (she is an indoor cat, after all). “When writing Penny’s inner monologues I try to walk that fine line between total ignorance and infinite wisdom,” says Stevens. “I tend to start out with her thinking that everything around her is new and wondrous, but then she’ll—by accident—say something that’s profound or witty. In other words, I try to approach her dialogue in the way a Surrealist would.” His comic strips have appeared in the alternative newsweekly the Boston Phoenix (2005-2012), The Village Voice (2016-2017), and The New Yorker magazine (2018-present).

Artist Website: https://www.instagram.com/karlstevensart/?hl=en

Funded through the generous support of the Gene R. Cohen Charitable Foundation.

Lyndsey Gallant

The Gene R. Cohen Charitable Foundation Series
Monday, April 3 (12:00-1:30pm)
Osher Hall

During her decade in the game industry, Lyndsey has done An Actual Jillion things as a triple-threat Art Director, Concept Artist & UI/UX Artist: visually designing some of the first mobile games that were enjoyed by millions of players, art directing a colourful tapestry of various indie games across tons of platforms, and occasionally dippin’ into the film and comic industries just to keep things fresh! Lyndsey was previously the Co-Founder and Art Director at Sonderlust Studios, where she developed the studio & its brand identity, as well as Art Directing and successfully procuring funding for their first IP. Currently, Lyndsey is the Art Director & CCO of absurd:joy, a collection of curious humans currently making Tangle - a remote collaboration app focused on privacy, agency, and joy! Besides makin’ human-centric visuals & art, Lyndsey is a yoga enthusiast, marathon runner, rabbit-owner, a pretty-dang-good cook, lover of karaoke, and the most ridiculous addition to any D&D campaign.

Artist Website: https://tangle.app/company/about/

Funded through the generous support of the Gene R. Cohen Charitable Foundation.

Helga & Holger Schmidhuber*

The Gary Ambrose Sculpture Series
Monday, April 10 (12:00-1:30pm)
Osher Hall

Helga Schmidhuber (*1972 Wiesbaden) studied in 1999, after completing studies in communication design at the RheinMain University of Applied Sciences, contemporary painting at the Düsseldorf Art Academy. 2000 - 2002 class of Prof. Dieter Krieg and until 2004 class of Prof. Albert Oehlen. 2004 graduation as master student with Oehlen. In 2005/06 Helga Schmidhuber held a teaching position for "Graphic Art" at the RheinMain University of Applied Sciences. Since 2006, the artist has participated in artist-in-residence programs and has worked in Austria, Iceland, Canada, and Spain. Her work has been shown internationally in important institutions such as the Hamburger Kunsthalle (D), CCA Kunsthalle, Andratx (ES), Museum Wiesbaden (D), Museum Villa Rot (D), Frankfurter Kunstverein (D), Nassauischer Kunstverein (D), among others. She was awarded the Markus Lüpertz Prize and the Max Ernst Scholarship. In 2020, she received the prestigious Hans Platschek Prize.

Holger Schmidhuber was born in 1970 in Germany. His early artistic development can be traced back to an interest in drawing, photography and, above all, music. While still at school he expressed these interests and his creativity as a drummer in various bands. Schmidhuber studied Painting and Communication Design at RheinMain University of Applied Sciences in Wiesbaden (Germany) and at Parsons School of Art, Media, and Technology in New York City (USA). Even during his studies, he teamed up with fellow students to establish Fuenfwerken, a design studio that has since won numerous awards and enjoys an excellent reputation in Germany today. He has held a Professorship for Time-based Media at Mainz University of Applied Sciences since 2010. Schmidhuber's work has been shown widely in national and international exhibitions, including: Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich (D); Museum Wiesbaden (D); Kunsthalle, Andratx (ES); sommer.frische.kunst, Bad Gastein (AT); Simard Bilodeau Contemporary Los Angeles (US); 7th BERLIN BIENNALE (D); Collectors Room, Hamburg (D); AOA;87, Bamberg & Basel (CH) and Grimani & Höhler, Zurich (CH).

Artist Website: www.helgaschmidhuber.com & https://holgerschmidhuber.com/

Funded through a generous gift from Dr. Edward M. Friedman '08 and Carole J. Friedman, in honor of Sculpture Professor Emeritus Gary Ambrose.

Fall 2022 Schedule

Danielle Scott*

The Gary Ambrose Sculpture Series
Monday, September 12 (12:00-1:00pm)
Osher Hall

Danielle Scott is a mixed-media assemblage artist who grew up in Jersey City, New Jersey.  Her work expresses politically and socially charged messaging. She recently received the 2021 Artist of the Year honor from ESKFF, which is the Eileen S. Kaminsky Family Foundation Artist Residency Program in Mana Contemporary, Jersey City, NJ.

A soft-spoken artist, Danielle has begun to use her art as a conduit to explore bold, fearless, thought-provoking works that draw inspiration largely from her own journey and life experience. Her latest pieces are brazen offerings conveying the intense beauty and wretched pain the artist absorbs from the world around her. She creates using photo montage, found objects, paint, raw materials, old books and collage. From vivid paintings to piercing photography to striking sculptures, all of Danielle’s artistic offerings aim to arrest the viewer and transport them away from the pretentious and into a realm rooted in truth.

Artist Website: https://artistdaniellescott.com/

Funded through a generous gift from Dr. Edward M. Friedman '08 and Carole J. Friedman, in honor of Sculpture Professor Emeritus Gary Ambrose.

April Vollmer

Monday, September 26 (12:00-1:00pm)
Osher Hall

April Vollmer is a New York artist and educator who specializes in mokuhanga, Japanese water based woodcut. Her autobiographical work concerns the patterns and contradictions of the natural world. She earned her M.F.A. from Hunter College, New York, in 1983 and first visited Japan with the Nagasawa Art Park Program in 2004. She has taught classes at the Japan Society and the Lower East Side Printshop in New York; Cabrillo College and Kala Art Institute in California; MakingArtSafely in New Mexico; The Morgan Conservatory in Ohio; Art Print Residence in Spain, as well as many other locations. She has given lectures and demonstrations at many colleges and independent print shops and has assisted in the organization of exhibitions of contemporary mokuhanga. Vollmer actively promotes cultural exchange through the study of mokuhanga. She was on the board of the First and Second International Mokuhanga Conferences in Kyoto and Tokyo and communications attaché for the third in Hawaii attracting approximately a hundred participants from sixteen countries. In addition to exhibiting her prints, her work has been published in journals including Science, Printmaking Today and Contemporary Impressions. Her book on the history and contemporary use of mokuhanga, Japanese Woodblock Print Workshop was released by Watson-Guptill in 2015.

Artist Website: https://www.aprilvollmer.com/

Hosted by the Printmaking Department

Raul De Lara*

The Gary Ambrose Sculpture Series
Monday, October 3 (12:00-1:00pm)
Osher Hall

Raul De Lara immigrated from Mexico to the United States at the age of 12, and has been a DACA recipient since 2012. Growing up in Texas as a non-English speaker, feeling neither from here nor there, his work now reflects on ideas of nationality, language barriers, body language and the sense of touch. His sculptures explore how stories, folklore and rituals can be silently communicated through inanimate objects, tools and foreign environments. De Lara often works with wood, a material that always shows the passing of time on its skin. His aesthetics and materials are inspired by the shared backyard between the United States and Mexico.

De Lara received his MFA in Sculpture + Extended Media from Virginia Commonwealth University and a BFA from the University of Texas at Austin. He has been awarded the Ox-Bow School of Art Fellowship, a Chicago Artists Coalition HATCH Residency, the International Sculpture Center Outstanding Student Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award and currently, he is a fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown.

Artist Website: www.rauldelara.com

Funded through a generous gift from Dr. Edward M. Friedman '08 and Carole J. Friedman, in honor of Sculpture Professor Emeritus Gary Ambrose.

Henri Paul Broyard

The Gene R. Cohen Charitable Foundation Series
Monday, October 17 (12:00-1:00pm)
Osher Hall

Henri Paul Broyard's engagement with the interior scene as framework for painterly experimentation. Originally from South Central, Los Angeles, Broyard harbors a lifelong fascination for vintage items and a genuine care for old things, collecting photographs from thrift shops, flea markets, and cast-off design magazines, often cropping them or removing figures to generate an initial pictorial situation. Within this structure, Broyard creates zones of abstraction that are alternately improvisatory and deliberate, working until portions of the picture may be unrecognizably distorted or transformed. 

Henri Paul Broyard received a B.F.A. in Drawing and Painting from the California College of the Arts in 2013. He attended the Klasse Peter Doig at the Kunstakademie, Dusseldorf, in 2014. His work has been included in exhibitions at: SOLA Art Gallery, Los Angeles; the School of Painting Hangzhou, China; Tom Dick or Harry, Dusseldorf; 41 Cooper Square Gallery, New York; Haphazard Gallery, Los Angeles; and 119 Essex Street, New York. His work has been featured in Surface and Studio Visit magazines. Broyard is represented by the Grant Wahlquist Gallery in Portland, Maine.

Artist Website: https://www.grantwahlquist.com/henri-paul-broyard

Funded through the generous support of the Gene R. Cohen Charitable Foundation.

Jon Kessler*

The Gary Ambrose Sculpture Series
Monday, October 24 (12:00-1:00pm)
Osher Hall

With his chaotic kinetic installations, Jon Kessler critiques our image-obsessed, surveillance-dominated world. His machines are at once complex and lumbering, combining mechanical know-how with kitschy materials and images. Structurally complex and narratively engaging, Jon Kessler’s multimedia sculptures often deliver an emotional punch beyond their humble means. With his distinct vocabulary, Kessler taps into our all-too-real modern-day anxieties, but at the same time, spirits us away into an exciting wonderland that is ultimately uplifting.

Artist Website: www.jonkessler.com

Funded through a generous gift from Dr. Edward M. Friedman '08 and Carole J. Friedman, in honor of Sculpture Professor Emeritus Gary Ambrose.

Tony Lewis

Gene R. Cohen Charitable Foundation Series
Monday, November 7 (12:00-1:00pm)
Osher Hall

Tony Lewis was born in 1986 in Los Angeles, California, and currently lives and works in Chicago, Illinois. In an ever-expanding engagement with drawing, Lewis harnesses the medium of graphite powder to confront such social and political topics as race, power, communication, and labor. His work has been the subject of recent solo exhibitions at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC (2018); Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts (2017); Museo Marino Marini, Florence, Italy (2016); and Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland, Ohio (2015). He participated in the 2014 Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, New York and was the recipient of the 2017–18 Ruth Ann and Nathan Perlmutter Artist-in-Residence Award at the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts.

Work by the artist is included in the ICA at MECA&D exhibition Sympathy for the translator — curated by Daisy Desrosiers.

Artist Website: https://www.blumandpoe.com/artists/tony_lewis

Funded through the generous support of the Gene R. Cohen Charitable Foundation.

Natalia Arbelaez

The Gene R. Cohen Charitable Foundation Series
Monday, November 14 (12:00-1:00pm)
Osher Hall

Natalia Arbelaez is a Colombian American artist, born and raised in Miami, Florida to immigrant parents. She received her B.F.A. from Florida International University and her M.F.A. from The Ohio State University, with an Enrichment Fellowship. In 2016-2017 she was a Rittenberg Fellow at Clay Art Center; Port Chester, New York and was awarded the Inaugural Artaxis Fellowship that funded a residency to Watershed in Newcastle, ME. Her work has been exhibited internationally, in museums, galleries, and included in various collections, such as the Everson Museum and MAD Museum. She has been recognized by NCECA as a 2018 Emerging Artist and was a 2018-19 resident artist at the Ceramics Program at Harvard University where she researched pre-Columbian art and histories. Natalia was an artist in residence at the Museum of Art and Design in New York City where she researched the work of historical and influential women ceramicists of color and continues this research as a Visiting Artist at AMOCA in Pomona, CA.

Artist Website: http://nataliaarbelaez.com/

Funded through the generous support of the Gene R. Cohen Charitable Foundation.