Each semester, our MFA and Post-Baccalaureate programs host a diverse array of national, international, and interdisciplinary artists, designers, art experts, curators, and writers. Visiting artists engage students in critiques and discussion and give a lecture open to the full MFA, MA, and Post-Baccalaureate community.

Derrick Adams, Curator, Richard Aldrich, Painter, Jonathan Barnbrook, Creative Designer, Koan Baysa, Curator, Zoe Beloff, Film/Projection, Clarina Bezzola, Performance/Video, Deborah Brown, Painter, George Ciscle, Curator, Willie Cole, Sculptor, Leigh Conner, Gallerist, Inka Essenhigh, Painter, Louise Fishman, Painter, Rainer Ganahl, Photography, Judy Glantzman, Painter, Eric Gunther, Graphic Designer, Douglas Gordan, Painter, Josephine Halvorson, Painter, Evelyn Hankins, Curator, Johannah Hutchison, Gallerist, James Hyde, Painter, Tal Leming, Type Designer, Thomas Levin, Scholar, Mel Leipzig, Painter, Robert Lobe, Sculptor, Abbott Miller, Graphic Designer, Valerie Piraino, Installation Artist, Brian Ralph, Illustration, David Reed, Painter, Michael Rees, Installation, Stanley Whitney, Painter

Biographies

Derrick Adams, NY- based multi-genre artist/curator. He received a BFA in Art & Design Education from Pratt (1996), and an MFA from Columbia University (2003). Derrick was the founding Director and Curator of Rush Arts Gallery and Resource Center. He has taught and lectured at Columbia University, the University of Tennessee/Knoxville School of Art, and MICA, as well as served on a number of artist panels, juries, and committees. Exhibition highlights include: PS1/MoMA Greater New York 2005, Performa 05, and Brooklyn Museum Open House. He also received a Louis Comfort Tiffany Award (2009).

Richard Aldrich was featured in the last Whitney Biennial in 2010. Recent solo Exhibitions "Slide Paintings", Marc Foxx in Los Angeles and Misako and Rosen in Tokyo, Japan in 2010. In 2009 he showed at Bortolami, New York, NY and Dépendance in Brussels, Belgium. His work was included in "Le Tableau", Cheim and Read in New York last summer as well as in group shows in Portugal, at the Kunstverein in Freiburg Germany, at the Gustavsbergs Konsthall, Gustavsberg in Sweden, at Galeria Marta Cervera in Madrid, and at MAMCO in Geneva, Switzerland.

Jonathan Barnbrook is one of Britain's most legendary creative designers. The team of designers at Barnbrook's studio produce innovative books, corporate identities, CD covers, custom fonts, websites and magazines. Clients range from international museums to charitable organizations. The studio has worked and won many awards in the area of motion graphics produced for clients such as the BBC and Grey Advertising alongside producing self-initiated projects. Barnbrook also releases original fonts through VirusFonts, which are used extensively worldwide. Barnbrook's contribution to graphic design was recognized by a major exhibition at the Design Museum, London in 2007.

Koan-Jeff Baysa is an independent curator, writer, practicing specialist physician, and alumnus of the Whitney Independent Study Program in Curatorial Studies. His writing appears in gallery and museum catalogues, art periodicals, website journals, and medical-science publications. Lecture venues include Montclair State University, Independent Studio and Curatorial Program, Parsons Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design New York Studio Program and ArtOMI; he has been a panelist in conferences on art by Asians and Asian-Americans at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, The Asian American Art Centre, University of Hawaii, Asian/Pacific/American Studies Program and Institute at NYU, and the Zimmerli Museum in New Jersey.

Zoe Beloff grew up in Edinburgh, Scotland. In 1980 she moved to New York to study at Columbia University where she received an MFA in Film. Her work has been featured in international exhibitions and screenings; venues include the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Freud Dream Museum in St. Petersburg, and the Pompidou Center in Paris. Her most recently completed work is the exhibition "The Coney Island Amateur Psychoanalytic Society and their Circle. Zoe's works with a wide range of media including film, stereoscopic projection performance, interactive media, installation and drawing.

A native of Switzerland Clarina Bezzola received her BFA at Parsons School of Design where she studied metalsmithing and furniture design. A serious singer who recently performed her first full-length soprano performance in the opera Rigoletto, and a solo vocal recital with the Zurich Chamber Orchestra. Bezzola creates intense transformative works that meld performance art, fiber sculpture, poetry and song.

Deborah Brown graduated summa cum laude, erous public commissions using mosaic including ones commissioned by the New York MTA Arts for Transit for the Houston Street station, the NJ Transit, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, the Miami-Dade Art in Public Places for the Port of Miami amoung others.

Leigh Conner is the founder of Conner Contemporary Art, a fine art gallery in Washington, DC. The gallery represents diverse contemporary artists working in all media. The curatorial program is unified by strong conceptual bases, including identity, materiality, historicity and popular iconography, which define and adjust contemporary art's function within the current of cultural change. In addition to its exhibition schedule, the gallery implements artistic initiatives such as performances, web-casts and off-site projects.

Willie Cole is best known for assembling and transforming ordinary domestic and used objects such as irons, ironing boards, high-heeled shoes, wooden matches, lawn jockeys, and other discarded appliances and hardware, into imaginative and powerful works of art and installations. Willie Cole's work is found in numerous private and public collections and museums around the world, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, New York; the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, the New York Public Library in New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, Illinois; and The College of New Jersey among others.

Inka Essenhigh is a spectacularly versatile painter. Her earlier work is characterized by glossy enameled surfaces depicting graphic narratives, which evolved from an automatic drawing process. Inka's more recent paintings illustrate surreal environments reflecting distorted scenes of everyday life and pop-culture. She is adept at communicating drama and movement through a combination of exaggerated gestures, broad simplistic brush strokes, and highly detailed areas. Living and working in New York, Inka is currently represented by Gallery 303 in Chelsea and the Victoria Miro Gallery in London.

While Louise Fishman's abstractions do not openly narrate the events of her life, they are certainly rooted in her cultural, political and emotional experiences. Born in Philadelphia in 1939, Fishman was active in the feminist movement of the late nineteen-sixties and early seventies. During this time, she temporarily abandoned painting for sculptural and material investigations that more closely related to her peers' pursuit of a distinctly feminine art. While this period of experimentation ultimately influenced the subsequent process and materials of her art making, Fishman's return to abstract painting was more directly anticipated by her charged 1973 series of "Angry Women" paintings.

Judy Glantzman received her BFA in painting from the RI School of Design in 1977. Last summer she showed some extraordinary white paintings from 1999 - 2001 at the Betty Cuningham Gallery in NY. Her work has been shown in numerous galleries and museums since 1977, including a 30 year retrospective at Dactyl Foundation in 2009 and solo exhibitions at Pennsylvania College of Art and Design, the Hester Gallery, University of Massachusetts, the Hudson River Museum, BlumHelman Gallery, NY, Hirschl and Adler Modern, Gracie Mansion Gallery in NY, the Nina Freudenheim Gallery, Buffalo in NY and the Institute for Art and Urban Resources, P.S. 1, Long Island City, NY.

Fay Ku was born in Taipei, Taiwan but immigrated to the United States at age three. She attended Bennington College and graduated in 1996 with a dual B.A. in Literature and Visual Arts and moved to New York City immediately after. In 2003, the artist return to school for graduate studies at Pratt Institute and was graduated in 2006 with a M.S. in Art History and M.F.A. in Studio Art. Since 2005, Fay Ku exhibited internationally in both group and solo exhibitions. Her artwork appeared in May 13, 2007 issue of The New York Times Magazine and she was the subject of a short Sundance Channel feature in 2008.

Rainer Ganahl is an Austrian born artist. His work consists of photographs, videos and performances. From 1986 until 1991, he studied at the University of Applied Arts Vienna (under Peter Weibel) and the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf (under Nam June Paik). His best known work, S/L (Seminars/Lectures), is an ongoing series of photographs, begun in 1995, of well-known cultural critics addressing audiences. The photographs, taken in university class rooms and lecture halls, not only show the lecturer but also the listeners and students in the audience. Rainer Ganahl represented Austria at the 1999 Venice Biennale.

Eric Gunther, SoSo Limited is an art and technology studio that specializes in interactive environments and multi-sensory design. They create award winning works for clients and galleries around the world. Formed by three MIT graduates with backgrounds in physics, computer science, architecture, and music, Sosolimited operates at the intersection of experience and information.

Josephine Halvorson received her MFA from Columbia University in 2007, her BFA from The Cooper Union in 2003, and attended the Yale Norfolk Summer School of Art in 2002. Halvorson is the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship to Vienna, Austria (2003-4), The Tiffany Foundation Award (2009), and a NYFA Fellowship in Painting (2010). She has enjoyed yearlong residencies in Paris as a Harriet Hale Woolley Fellow at the Fondation des États-Unis (2007-8), and in Brooklyn at the Marie Walsh Sharpe Space Program (2009-10). Solo exhibitions include "Clockwise From Window" at Monya Rowe Gallery (2009-10) and "Josephine Halvorson" at Sikkema Jenkins & Co.'s West Gallery (2008-9). Halvorson lives and works in Brooklyn and her work is represented by Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York.

Evelyn Hankins, Associate Curator at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. since 2007. She earned her Master of Arts and Ph. D. in art history from Stanford University. From 2004-2007, Hankins was the Curator of Collections and Exhibitions at the Robert Hull Fleming Museum at the University of Vermont in Burlington. Previously, she worked at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, NY.

James Hyde has been an important presence on the downtown NY and international art scene for more than thirty years. His work has been exhibited in hundreds of group shows and his solo shows include Brent Sikkema Gallery, John Good Gallery, NY, Wesleyan University, the Angles Gallery, Santa Monica, the Charlotte Jackson Gallery, Santa Fe, the Weatherspoon Art Museum, the San Diego Museum of Art, Le Quartier, Centre d'Art Contemporain de Quimper, France, and the Elisabeth Kaufmann Gallery, Zurich to name a few.

Mel Leipzig studied at Cooper Union, Yale, and Pratt. Has exhibited extensively and received a Fulbright (1958-59), a Louis Comfort Tiffany Award (1959-60), and a grant in painting from the National Endowment for the Arts. His works are in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the National Academy Museum, and the Cooper-Hewitt Museum. He is represented by Gallery Henoch in Chelsea.

Tal Leming, Type Supply, is a type designer, lettering artist and type technology specialist living and working in Baltimore, Maryland. After graduating from Louisiana State University in 1997 he worked for DSI-LA where he specialized in corporate identity and communication design. After his tenure at DSI-LA, he handled brand and promotion design duties at Zoom Design (now Bochanis Rogan Zoom). In 2001 he joined the legendary type foundry House Industries as a resident jack of all trades. In 2005 he set out on his own to found Type Supply where he focuses on developing original typefaces and lettering while pushing the boundaries of type technology.

Thomas Levin joined the faculty at Princeton in 1990 following graduate study in art history and philosophy at Yale University and after a year in Los Angeles as a fellow at the J. Paul Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities. His teaching and scholarship range from the history of aesthetic theory and Frankfurt School cultural theory to the history and theory of media (archaeologies of vision, Early German Cinema, Weimar Cinema, New German Cinema, rhetoric of new media). He curated a major international exhibition entitled "CTRL [SPACE]: Rhetorics of Surveillance from Bentham to Big Brother" which was on view at the Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie (ZKM) in Karlsruhe through late February 2002.

Inspired by the shapes, materials, and textures found almost specifically in the woods, Robert Lobe depicts rocks and trees in shimmering, hollow forms using heat-treated, hammered aluminum. The signature process Lobe uses is an adaptation of repoussé, an ancient technique in which metal is hammered, usually from the inside, to create designs or shapes. Lobe's work has been commissioned and exhibited in galleries and museums across the country, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Whitney Museum of American Art, both in New York City; National Gallery, Washington, D.C.; Cleveland Museum of Art, OH; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN.

Abbott Miller, Pentagram, studied design at the Cooper Union School of Art in New York. In 1989 he founded the multidisciplinary studio Design/Writing/Research where, in collaboration with Ellen Lupton, he pioneered the concept of "designer as author" undertaking projects in which content and form are developed in a symbiotic relationship. He joined Pentagram's New York office as a partner in June 1999. Abbott's projects are often concerned with the cultural role of design and the public life of the written word. At Pentagram he leads a team designing books, magazines, catalogs, identities, exhibitions, and creating editorial projects.

Installation artist Valerie Piraino's practice is concerned with reconciling the gap between the understanding of her birthplace, Rwanda-which she gained through family photographs-and the disparate reality of the place that confronted her upon returning as an adult. She is dexterous in her influences, ideas and production; oftentimes, she will reuse a work in several different contexts to create new installations. Piraino notes of this practice, "Observing the themes, materials and imagery that I repeatedly return to fosters a deeper understanding of what my artistic motivations are."

David Reed was born in San Diego, California in 1946. He received his BA in 1968 from Reed College in Portland Oregon after studying at the New York Studio School, and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine. Represented for a number of years by the Max Protech Gallery in NY, Reed's solo exhibitions have been presented at Rolf Ricke in Cologne, at Häusler Contemporary in Munich, at the Kölnischer Kunstverein in Cologne, the Württembergischer Kunstverein in Stuttgart, and the Westfälischer Kunstverein in Münster all in Germany, as well as at the Kunstmuseum St. Gallen in Switzerland and at the Neue Galerie am Landesmuseum Joanneum in Graz, Austria.

Michael Rees is a native Kansas citizen whose work merges the realms of art, science, and technology. Rees's unusual process often involves 3-D modeling and digital animation of forms as a first step, followed by output to a Rapid Prototyping Machine or Computer Numeric Controlled mill. The resulting works combine video animation, shown on a screen, with three-dimensional sculptures, so that the ethereal realm of the digital is intertwined with and inextricable from the concrete and the physical.

Stanley Whitney received his MFA from Yale University in 1972, his BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute in 1968. Recent solo exhibitions have been at Team Gallery, New York in 2010, in Vienna in 2009,2007, and 2003 at Christine Koenig Galleria, in 2007 at Galleria Ramis Barquet in Mexico and at Esso Gallery in New York in 2006, 2005, and 2003 amoung many others. Recent group exhibitions include the Tang Museum, Saratoga Springs, NY, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York in 2010.