Each academic year, visiting artists and scholars are invited to the School of Visual
Art and Design to engage students, faculty, and the public with their research, work,
and ideas. We program exhibitions, presentations, graduate student studio critiques,
or hands-on workshops into each visit.
2020 - 2021 Academic Year
Fall 2020
Dr. Sharif Bey, Artist and Art Educator
Sharif Bey, Ph.D., is a ceramic artist, art educator, and scholar. He is Associate Professor
of Art Education at Syracuse University in New York. Dr. Bey’s work reflects his interest
in the visual heritage of Africa and Oceania, the cultural and political significance
of ornamentation and adornment, as well as contemporary African American culture.
Virtual talk: September 18, 1:00 pm, Facebook Live. Free and open to the public.
Virtual workshop: September 18, 2:30 pm, Facebook Live. Free and open to the public. Details forthcoming.
Coordinators: Hyunji Kwon, Olga Ivashkevich, and Minuette Floyd
Dr. LaNitra Berger, Art Historian
LaNitra M. Berger, Ph.D., is an art historian whose research focuses on the intersections of art and
social activism in the black and Jewish diasporas. Dr. Berger is the senior director
of fellowships in the Honors College at George Mason University, where she is an affiliate
faculty in the History and Art History Department. She has written and taught on subjects
ranging from lynching photography to racial representations in German Expressionism.
Virtual lecture: "Audacities of Color: Irma Stern and the Racial Paradox of Global German Expressionism" September 24, 6:00 pm
The Guerrilla Girls are a feminist, activist artist collective committed to fighting injustice in the
arts. They wear signature gorilla masks in public and take on the names of dead women
artists to remain anonymous. Founded in New York City in 1985, they began by flyposting
text and photo-based messages on the streets of SoHo to call attention to discriminatory
practices by galleries and museums towards women. Today, they use stickers, flyers,
and advertising campaigns full of facts, humor, and outrageous visuals to expose bias
and corruption in politics, art, film, and pop culture. They create works of art that
reveal the understory, the subtext, the overlooked, and the downright unfair. The
Guerrilla Girls believe in an intersectional feminism that fights discrimination and
supports human rights for all people and all genders.
An exhibition of their works in McMaster Gallery, Guerrilla Girls: Art, Power, and Justice for All!, will explore text and photo-based activist works that use statistics and humor to shock and reveal
underlying issues of power and representation in the arts, and chronicle the Guerrilla
Girls’ history of institutional critique in the field of contemporary art.
This program is part of the Justice Theme Semester in the College of Arts and Sciences. Support comes from a grant from the Knight Foundation
fund at the Central Carolina Community Foundation, the College of Arts and Sciences
at UofSC, and the Elizabeth M. Marion Visiting Artist Fund at the School of Visual
Art and Design, and the Columbia Museum of Art.
Amanda Smith is an award-winning interdisciplinary artist based in Missouri, where she is Assistant
Professor of Painting and Drawing at Missouri State University. Amanda Smith’s exhibition
at McMaster Gallery will feature hybrid quilt paintings and cushion-stuffed works
which challenge our common associations of quilts as sources of comfort and conduits
to rest. Her works tap into our collective unease about transitioning environmental,
political, and social landscapes.
Exhibition: Restless Sleepers, January 14 - February 18, 2021
Artist Talk: Details forthcoming
Lecture: Details forthcoming
Workshop: Details forthcoming
Coordinator: Olga Yukhno, McMaster Gallery
Noah Scalin, Artist
Noah Scalin is an internationally-exhibiting multidisciplinary fine artist. Noah Scalin’s work
explores the theme of transience and temporality of human existence. His works are
rooted in the medieval concept of memento mori, a reflection on mortality meant to
spur a greater reverence for life and reevaluation of priorities, often asking us
to take notice of quotidian moments.
By using everyday and mass produced consumer items like stickers in his photographs,
installations, and sculptures, Scalin asks the viewer to recontextualize the things
in their lives that are normally taken for granted, overlooked, or discarded. His
work narrates the potential long-term impact of humans and their physical creations.
Much of Scalin’s work is intentionally temporary or ephemeral. Like human existence,
these works revert back to their component parts or are destroyed after a short lifespan,
only to exist in documentation and memories after they’re gone.
Free and Public Lecture: March 30, 6:00 PM, Zoom. RSVP online.
Coordinator: Meena Khalili
Jonathan Pellitteri, Artist
Jonathan Pellitteri is an award-winning, North Carolina-based artist working with three dimensional objects
and industrial materials. His sculptural and installation practice involves life-size
objects and miniature models to engage viewers in curious and explorative ways that
stimulate personal narratives and evoke private memories. His exhibition at McMaster
Gallery will explore current debates over humanity’s impact on the environment, sustainability,
and the exploitation of natural resources.
Exhibition: Canary in the Coalmine, April 22 - May 27, 2021
Free and Public Lecture: Details forthcoming
Gallery Talk and Reception: Details forthcoming
Coordinator: Olga Yukhno, McMaster Gallery
Past Artists and Scholars
Art Historian, Professor
Alison J. Miller, Assistant Professor of Art History, is a scholar of Asian art who
specializes in modern and contemporary Japanese art, prints and photography, and the
intersections of gender studies and visual culture.
Dr. Miller earned a Ph.D. in Art History at the University of Kansas, M.A. degrees
in Art History and Museum Studies from the University of Kansas, and B.A. degrees
in Art History and Anthropology from Northern Illinois University. Her research has
been funded by a Fulbright Fellowship, Foreign Language Area Studies Fellowship, and
Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship. She has published in TransAsia Photography
Review, Impressions, and various museum catalogues.
Dr. Miller’s book manuscript, tentatively titled, "The Feminine Imperial Image in
Japan, 1868-1952" addresses how prints, photographs, and paintings of the modern Japanese
empresses were used to construct norms of modern femininity and class.
Lecture: “Images of the Imperial: The Modern Japanese Empresses in Visual Culture” March 2, McMaster 214, 4:00 pm Free and open to the public.
Curator, Writer, Activist
Elizabeth M. Marion Visiting Artist
Kimberly Drew is a curator, activist, and author of soon-to-be released Black Futures, an anthology of contemporary Black experiences, and This Is What I Know About Art, part of a young adult series featuring big ideas from today’s leading activists
and artists. She has been featured in Vogue, Vanity Fair, and Glamour for her work. She is the creator of the blog “Contemporary Black Art” and has worked at Creative Time and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
Learn about her experiences in creative careers and how she champions Black art and
culture and advocates for radical art access.
Workshop: Curating in the Digital Age February 27, 2:00 - 3:00 pm School of Visual Art and Design McMaster Room 323 Free and open to the public.
Lecture: February 27 6:00 - 8:00 PM Columbia Museum of Art Free and open to the public.
Co-sponsors: African American Studies Program at UofSC and the Friends of African
American Art and Culture at the Columbia Museum of Art
Artist, Researcher, Professor
Andrea Kantrowitz is an artist, educator and researcher who uses cognitive psychology
theories and methods to study the hidden dynamics of artists’ thinking processes.
Her work includes a randomized control trial that demonstrated the impact of an interdisciplinary
art curriculum for students growing up in poverty. She has lectured and led workshops
on art and cognition internationally. Kantrowitz believes drawing represents a solid
example of human imagination at work. She is the graduate program coordinator and assistant professor in Art Education at the State University of New York @ New Paltz. As director of the Thinking through Drawing Project at Teachers College, Columbia
University, she organized a series of international drawing and cognition research symposia, in collaboration with colleagues from the U.K. She holds a B.A in Art and Cognition
from Harvard University and a MFA in Painting from Yale. She has taught foundation
drawing at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and graduate courses in contemporary art at
the College of New Rochelle. She was a teaching artist in the New York City for many
years, involved in multiple local and national research projects. She recently completed
an interdisciplinary doctorate at Teachers College which examined the cognitive interactions
underlying contemporary artists’ drawing practices.
Lecture: Wednesday, February 19, 4:00 - 5:00 PM, McMaster 214
Animation Consultant and Acting Coach
Allen Simpson is an acting coach and visual consultant for various animation and VFX studios including
Pixar, DreamWorks, BlueSky and The Third Floor, among others.
Workshop: Visual Storytelling Workshop for Animators and Media Artists February 5 9:30-11:30 am McMaster College Room 214 Free & open to the public.
Co-sponsor: Rhodos Fellows
Artist, Professor
Lecture: January 15, McMaster 214 Gallery Exhibition Reception and Artist's Talk: January 16, 5:00 PM
The many layered realities of the history and visual archives of Dean’s communal ancestry
establish and impart creative purpose and structure in her studio practice and research.
The visual and historical synthesis of quilts, cotton trade, and vast realm of textiles
inform and shape her ideas, concepts, and approach to the spectrum of ceramic material.
Cotton, the commodity at the center of Dean’s ancestry by way of its production and
trade, leads her into the larger realm of global trade, commodities, and resulting
cultural implications of people and time.
Chotsani Elaine Dean is Assistant Professor of Art at the South Carolina School of the Arts at Anderson
University. Born in Hartford, CT, Chotsani received her B.F.A. in Ceramics from Hartford
Art School and M.F.A. from the Sam Fox School of Art at Washington University in St.
Louis. In the summer of 2020, Chotsani will be an artist in residence at the John
Michael Kohler Arts Industry Residency in the Pottery Factory in Sheboygan, WI. In
2012-2013, Chotsani completed a Fulbright-Nehru teaching/research grant in India.
Chotsani has lectured and exhibited widely in places such as 701 Contemporary Center
for Contemporary Art, Hartford Art School, Northern Clay Center, Moon Gallery at Berry
College, Katherine Walsh Gallery, Appalachia State University, Kriti Gallery, Aurodhran
Gallery, Hans Weiss Newman Space, Hunterdon Museum of Art, among others. In 2010,
Dean was awarded a Connecticut Arts Grant from the state of Connecticut.
Filmmaker
A filmmaker and former SVAD visiting professor, Morrison produced his film Decasia in partnership with UofSC's Moving Image Research Collections.
Lecture: September 16, 2019, 2:00 - 4:00 pm, School of Visual Art and Design
Screening: September 16, 2019, 5:30 pm, the Nickelodeon Theater
Dee specializes in branding, typography, user-experience and editorial design, and
packaging. She is Assistant Professor and Chair of the Graphic Design program at Virginia
Tech.
Lecture: September 19, 5:30 pm, Room 214
Professor Hong is a visual artist working across disciplines with an emphasis on
drawing. SVAD is pleased to host Disjunction and Other Works, her exhibition of large-scale graphite work, in McMaster Gallery.
Exhibition: August 29 - October 3, 2019
Artist Talk: October 3, 6:00 pm
Elizabeth M. Marion Visiting Artist 2019
Baumbach's work has been displayed in juried events, solo exhibitions, and both temporary
and permanent public installations. She is an Associate Professor at the University
of Wyoming.
McMaster Gallery Exhibition: October 17 - November 20, 2019
Workshop: October 16, 2019 Artist Talk: October 17, 2019
Join Miranda Banks (Associate Professor, Emerson College) for a talk and a game workshop!
GAME WORKSHOP: February 8th, 2019, 10 AM – 12 PM, SVAD/McMaster 329. PLAY Miranda Banks’ GAME, “Room At the Top," a massive multiplayer game that challenges
assumptions about how we collaborate in creative environments.
PRESENTATION: Febuary 8th, 2019, 3PM – 5 PM, SVAD/McMaster 214 “Power and Privilege on the Road to Hollywood: Rerouting Pre-Industry Pipelines.”
Recent years have seen a rise in advocacy initiatives for women and people of color
working in Hollywood. Film schools are more equitable than the media industries to
which they serve as pipelines, but there are ways in which universities and training
programs are reproducing the industries’ biases. In her talk, Miranda Banks will identify
challenges and opportunities around issues of equity and access within the industries
and pre-industries, arguing that media production programs are uniquely positioned
to educate the next generation of media makers about creative collaboration across
differences and challenge the status quo. She will discuss two interventions she has
been involved in: as designer of Room at the Topand as a co-founder of the initiativeEdit Media.
Jason Ferguson is a three dimensional artist who incorporates video and performance
into his practice. He is currently Associate Professor of Sculpture at Eastern Michigan
University.
3D Scanning workshop and lecture, November 7 - 9, 2018.
A three dimensional artist and ceramicist, Rocky Lewycky is the Elizabeth M. Marion
Visiting Artist at the School of Visual Art and Design. Lewycky is currently a professor
and the head of the Ceramics department at De Anza College.
Three day workshop, October 22 - 24, 2018.
Lusztig is a documentary filmmaker and Associate Professor of Film and Media at the
University of California, Santa Cruz.
Film Screening, "Yours in Sisterhood," at the Nickelodeon Theater, September 17 -
18, 2018.
The artist duo of Wendy DesChene, Associate Professor at Auburn University, and Jeff
Schmuki, Associate Professor at Georgia Southern University, are the creators of PlantBot
Genetics-- a satirical biotech company that parodies the Monsanto Corporation and
other Big Agriculture firms using robotic plants that sing and dance without promise
for the future of food. Join us for a PlantBot making workshop, lecture, and exhibition opening reception
in McMaster Gallery.
Tyler Peck, a writer’s P.A. on the TV show SALVATION is speaking in Professor Davis’s
TV Writing class at 1:45 P.M. at Gambrell classroom 001 (in the basement by the computer
lab). He is a graduate of Davis’s TV and Advanced Screenwriting classes and Faye
Riley’s MART 321 class. Mart students are welcome to come ask questions. Read about
him more at:
In 2013, Kirkland received the People's Choice Award at Artfields, the Southeast's
largest art competition. She received her BA in Studio Arts from the University of
South Carolina.
April 17-18, 2018
Tintype workshop
April 6, 2018
Adam Habib is a cinematographer and a UofSC graduate, with a B.A. in film and media studies.
Dates: September 8 – 9, 2017 Faculty Sponsor: Laura Kissel
Lily Kuonen is a painter and describes her work like this: "PLAYNTING, a self-prescribed moniker
and philosophy for my studio production, involves the synthesis of painting with additional
forms, materials, surfaces and actions (PLAY + PAINTING)."
Kris Ercums is a curator at the Spencer Museum of Art.
Date: Week of October 23, 2017 Co-sponsorship: Maxcy College Pending co-sponsorship: Asian Studies, Confucius Institute Faculty sponsor: Amanda Wangwright
Meggan Gould, 2017 Elizabeth M. Marion Visiting Artist, is a photographer.
Dates: November 18th, 2017 Faculty sponsor: Lauren Greenwald
