ASHEVILLE MUSEUM, WESTERN CO-SPONSOR                                                                                        
VISITING ARTIST SUMMER LECTURE SERIES

Daniel Jocz (left) is among the visiting artists taking part in Western's summer lecture and discussion series in Asheville for 2005. In this shot from last summer, Jocz talks with student Justice Littlejohn in the studios of the Fine and Performing Arts Center at Western.

CULLOWHEE – The department of art at Western Carolina University will hold a summer lecture and discussion series in Asheville featuring visiting artists who will be teaching in Western's master's degree program in fine arts, offering classes this summer in the university's new Fine and Performing Arts Center.

The six programs in the series will be hosted by the Asheville Art Museum at 6 p.m. on selected Wednesdays in June and July.

“We are looking forward to a dynamic partnership between the Asheville Art Museum and Western Carolina University,” said Bree Edwards, the museum's curator of education. “I know the MFA faculty will excite and inspire the local community and serve as a way for people of the city to hear more about what is happening in Cullowhee.”

Opening the series Wednesday, June 8, is David Packer, a British-born ceramic sculptor who lives and works in New York. Packer's recent shows were with Garth Clark Galleries in New York, and he had a solo show this spring at Enoch Pratt Gallery in Baltimore.

The remainder of the series:

June 15 – Margaret Lanzetta, a New York-based painter who was recently inducted into the Queens International at the Queens (N.Y.) museum. Lanzetta will have a solo show later this year at the ATP Gallery in London and in 2006 at Kenise Barnes Gallery in New York.

June 22 – Carolyn Zick, a West Coast painter from Seattle who is one of the most-respected art bloggers in the country and who will be artist-in-residence in Akureyri, Iceland, this fall; and Judy Glantzman, a figurative painter, draughtsman and printmaker based in New York City who has received numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Foundation Grant, Pollock Krasner Grant and New York Foundation for the Arts Grant.

July 6 – Daniel Jocz, who critics have called “the bad boy of contemporary jewelry design.” Trained as a sculptor and draughtsman and internationally known in the field of metalsmithing, Jocz incorporates aspects of architecture, sculpture, painting, drawing and the decorative arts into his works. Based in Cambridge, Mass., he has exhibited throughout the world, and he is recipient of two Massachusetts Artists Fellowships.

July 20 – George Hildrew and Barbara Grossman. Hildrew is a Brooklyn-based painter whose work is described by critics as “mannered conceptualism within a contemporary folk tradition.” He has been listed as part of a group of artists producing a new kind of narrative art. Grossman is a colorist who has exhibited nationally for 25 years and recently received a visual arts fellowship from the Connecticut Commission on the Arts. A Fulbright Scholar, Grossman has twice received the National Academy of Design Award for Painting.

July 27 – Elena Sisto, a New York-based painter whose paintings of single figures are characterized by critics as both emotionally and physically charged. She is a recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts Visual Artists' Fellowships.

The lecture series is part of Western's Master of Fine Arts degree program, an area of graduate study with an unconventional course structure featuring an intensive on-campus residency during the summer. During the fall and spring semesters, students may choose to work on-campus with opportunities for graduate assistantships and studio spaces, or work off-campus to remain connected with their professional obligations.

The 10-week summer residency provides emerging artists who are accepted into the MFA program with a valuable opportunity to tap into the experience of professional faculty, including visiting artists and critics, said Jon Jicha, director of Western's MFA program.

“Graduate students benefit from these internationally respected artists and critics who challenge their ideas and provoke their individual visions,” Jicha said. “Students and faculty engage in discourse on various issues, including the function of contemporary criticism and theory, the nature of current national and international exhibitions, and the critique of studio work that is being created.”

For more information, contact Jicha at (828) 227-3597 or via e-mail at jjicha@wcu.edu ; or contact the Asheville Art Museum at (828) 253-3227.