Artist and Scholar Talks Go Virtual

Kent State University’s School of Art is happy to announce the fall 2020 schedule of virtual artist and scholar lectures. Four talks will be taking place over the fall semester in a virtual format. The visiting artists and scholars will cover a wide range of social topics, including feminism, violence/war, racism and transgender issues. Links to the live events will be posted on the School of Art’s website. All lectures start at 12 p.m. on the dates listed below. All artists and scholar talks are free and open to the public. 

Sept. 25 - Visiting Scholar Maria Elena Buszek, Art History and Painting

Oct. 2 - Visiting Artist Stephen Saracino, Jewelry/Metals/Enameling

Nov. 6 - Visiting Artist Faisal Abdu'allah, Print Media and Photography

Dec. 4 -  Visiting Scholar, Kevin Jenkins, Art Education

About the artists and scholars:

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Maria Elena Buszek, Ph.D., is a scholar, critic, curator and associate professor of art history at the University of Colorado Denver, where she teaches courses on Modern and contemporary art. Her recent publications include the books “Pin-Up Grrrls: Feminism, Sexuality, Popular Culture” and “Extra/ordinary: Craft and contemporary art”; contributions to the anthologies “Punkademics: The Basement Show in the Ivory Tower and Design History Beyond the Canon”; catalogue essays for numerous international exhibitions; and articles and criticism in such journals as Art in America, Art Journal, Flash Art and TDR: The Journal of Performance Studies. With Hilary Robinson, she edited the 2019 anthology of new writing, “A Companion to Feminist Art.” She has also been a regular contributor to the popular feminist magazine BUST since 1999. Her current book project, “Art of Noise,” explores the ties between contemporary feminist art and popular music.
Website: http://www.mariabuszek.com

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Stephen Saracino, a Kent State alumnus (MFA ’84, Metalsmithing), has been an educator and exhibiting artist for three decades. His often satirical narrative pieces often reflect personal or political concerns and have been featured in more than 50 exhibitions throughout the U.S. and Japan. Saracino is a professor of metalsmithing design at SUNY Buffalo State. His work was recently featured in the exhibition “Constructed Answer” at the Center for the Visual Arts Gallery at Kent State that centered around the 50th commemoration of the May 4 shootings on campus.

Website: https://stephensaracino.com/ 

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Faisal Abdu’Allah is a multidisciplinary British artist who creates iconographic imagery through a conceptual lens, exploring intersections of race, identity, power and representation as they relate to ideology and culture. A trained printmaker and barber, Abdu’Allah’s practice blends photography, print media, installation, film, music and performance to challenge and interrogate these constructs.

Abdu’Allah studied in London at the Royal College of Art. He is an associate professor of printmaking at UW–Madison and has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the 2012 Mayors prize for sustainability for his film Double Pendulum, Decibel Visual Artist Award, London, First Prize at the Tallinn Print Triennial, Estonia, and is a 2016 recipient of The Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant Program for Painters and Sculptors.

Website: http://faisalabduallah.com/

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Kevin Jenkins, Ph.D., is a postdoctoral scholar of art education at Penn State University, where he teaches courses in teacher preparation, understanding the art experiences of children, youth, and adults, and the visual cultures of diverse populations with respect to concerns of social and political equity.

He earned his Ph.D. in Art Education (2018) at the University of North Texas. His dissertation, titled Dis/appearance, In/visibility and the Transitioning Body on Social Media: A Post-Qualitative & Multimodal Inquiry, earned the 2019 university-wide Toulouse Dissertation Award, in the Social Sciences division and was nominated for the National Art Education Association 2020 Elliot Eisner Doctoral Research Award in Art Education. At UNT, he also served as a teaching fellow (2014-2017) for preservice art education courses in contemporary global art/artists and digital technologies in the art classroom.

He is an artivist, vlogger, curriculum designer and educator of trans experience whose research includes gender transition documentation as palimpsest and social media as an artistic space that serves as a pedagogical tool and a site for activism.

Website: https://kevinjenkinsart.weebly.com/