Roman J. Witt Visits are offered to bring a unique artistic experience to the A&D community. The Witt Visitor comes to work at the school, give workshops for students, and participate in critiques and classroom visits. Visitors may be well-known artists-designers, as well as younger, emerging artists-designers. As visitors are meant to enhance curriculum in a practical manner, nominations are exclusive to faculty.
Winter 2012 Witt Visitors
January 6-13, 2012
Kathy High
Digital Video
Kathy High is Associate Professor of Video and new Media at the Department of the Arts at Rensselaer Polyechnic Institute in Troy, NY. She teaches digital video production, history and theory and has been working in the area of documentary and experimental film, video and photography for over twenty years. She produces videos and installations posing queer and feminist inquiries into areas of medicine/bio-science, science fiction, and animal/interspecies collaborations. She has also recently started the BioArts Initiative at Rensselaer, a collaboration between the Arts Department and the Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies.
January 23-25, 2012
Shannon Goff
Sculpture
Shannon Goff works with Sculpture, Ceramics, and Drawing. Her work, often large scale, typically employs clay or cardboard. She has lived and worked recently in Chicago, Detroit, Providence, Kyoto, Dallas, and Sheboygan, often with her husband Tom Lauerman.
February 7-9, 2012
Kelly Sears
Animator & Filmmaker
Kelly Sears is an animator and filmmaker living in Galveston, TX. She is a current resident at the Galveston Artist Residency and a 2009-2011 fellow at the Core Program at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Her work has been shown at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Hammer Museum, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, Anthology Film Archives, Sundance and in galleries and film festivals internationally. Her collage films are created from discarded periodicals, books, archives, and orphan films. They harness images of the past to reflect on the present. Her films draw on experimental, documentary and narrative practices and feature both analog and digital animation techniques.
February 9, 2012
Dennis O’Neil
Printmaking
Dennis O’Neil is the director of the Handprint Workshop International (a screen printmaking studio) and professor at the Corcoran College of Art & Design. Dennis is well known for innovating many new techniques in screen-printing that have led to collaborative prints with major Russian and American artists.
February 2012
Tim Raynard
Clay Modeler
Tim is currently a clay modeler for Calty, a sub company of Toyota. His studio is involved in making clay models and various hard models for production vehicles. Tim has a design background from the University of Michigan School of Art and Design and has done work abroad in Trondheim, Norway.
March 13-14, 2012
Nick Barbee
Sculpture
Nick looks to the creation of our collective memory as Americans, particularly in our American legends and histories, as a source of inspiration. Recent projects include daily self portraits as iconic historical figures (John Brown, Arthur Ashe, Pocahontas), and a group of sculptures relating allegorical abstraction of the 1712 play by Joseph Addison, “Cato, a Tragedy” (a favorite of the Founding Fathers) to the formal abstraction of 3d models of bullet trajectories through human flesh into elegant carved sculptures reminiscent of Brancusi’s “Bird In Space” series.
March 14-16, 2012
Travis Chamberlain
Director, producer and curator
Travis Chamberlain is a director, producer, and curator based in New York City, originally from North Carolina. As the Artistic Director of THE KINDNESS, a production company formed in 2011 with Chris Keegan, he is committed to a reassessment of the histories of transgressive culture. Since 2007, Chamberlain has curated and developed performances at the New Museum, showcasing work by artists such as Young Jean Lee, Jack Ferver, Dynasty Handbag, Martha Colburn, Keith Hennessy, and Ishmael Houston-Jones. Chamberlain is also a founding member of the glam rock band The Fabulous Entourage, described as “a quintet of youthful punk-popsters hell-bent on bringing theatrics back to rock n’ roll” by The New Yorker during the Whitney Biennial in 2004.
March 17 – 21
Emmelene Landon
Painter
Emmelene Landon is an Australian-born painter and translator who has lived in France since 1979. She is the author of four books in French. In 2001, she sailed around the world on a container ship and recorded her trip on canvas and paper, in photos, videos and text.
March 27 – April 1 , 2012
Pat Oleszko
Performance Artist
PAT OLESZKO makes a spectacle of herself and doesn’t mind if you laugh. Known as the Ms Tricks of Dis Guise, she has a large body of work which includes many Unnatural Acts. Utilizing elaborate costumes and props, she has created lithe performantzes, films and installations that a-dress trees, knees, breasts, butts, elephants and fingers. There have been notorious spatial events with the cast-off thousands. She has worked from the popular art forms of the street, party, parade and burlesque house to the Museum of Modern Art, from Sesame Street Magazine to Ms, Playboy, and Artforum. A much decorated artist both literally and figuratively, she has been amply rewarded for her diverse efforts pumping irony and disparately trying to bring home the beacon. The truth squirts.
March 27 – April 1 , 2012
Leighton Pierce
Installation Artist
Leighton Pierce uses film, video, and sound to create experiences in transformative time. He creates multi-channel site-specific installations as well as single channel works. Pierce studied ceramics and music composition, especially jazz and electronic music, before making films. In fact, his first move into filmmaking came about from his frustration with the lack of a visual component to taped music. It is a continuation of this early interest in music and the construction of emotional experiences in time that continue to guide his work. Perhaps partly due to this background in ceramics and music, Pierce executes all aspects of his works himself including the conception, the cinematography, the editing, and of course the sound design and composition. While widely recognized for his stunning cinematography, he considers his editing and sound design to be the core of his art. His award-winning short films and videos have been exhibited in major art museums and film festivals throughout the world.
April 2-3, 2012
Valeri Pfahning
Visual effects supervisor
Valeri has worked as a digital compositor and visual effects supervisor in the film and television industry since 1999. She has a background in visual arts and graphic design. She was awarded a VES award in 2006 for Outstanding Created Environment in “Into the West” in addition to being nominated for an Emmy award in 2007 for Outstanding Special Visual Effects for her work in “Grey’s Anatomy.”
Selected Past Witt Visitors
Fall 2011
James King
Speculative Designer, Fall 2011
The Witt Resident: James King
What if we have to accept a higher level of risk in order to benefit from technology? When the unexpected does happen, what will it look like and how will communities respond? How will we live well in a world that is increasingly complex and interconnected?
Speculative designer James King collaborates with scientists to design potential applications for their research, imagining the possible outcomes if technologies developed in the lab were adopted by people in their everyday lives. The results are objects, films and images intended to spark debate on the desirable and undesirable qualities of future technology.
For King, the most rewarding aspect of these collaborations has been the opportunity, not just to interpret scientific research, but also to contribute to it. “The design process is an implicit but unrecognized aspect of the biological sciences. Through further collaborations and projects my aim is to build an explicit role for design as part of scientific practice.”
The Project: A World of Surprises
King’s project during his Witt Residency is a design and science collaboration imagining what it will be like to live with the risks created by developing technologies. Working with University of Michigan students and faculty, and the Ann Arbor community, King will stage a series of temporary installations and happenings in and around Ann Arbor that tell the story of a fictional technological accident and its ramifications.
The project will be documented as a film, and the film will be shown in as part of a seminar held at the end of the project bringing together experts to discuss the intersection between risk, science and art / design.
[vimeo]19759432[/vimeo]
Fall 2011
Erin Markey
Performer, November 1 - 7, 2011
Host: Holly Hughes
Erin Markey (BFA ’04), a Brooklyn-based writer/performer, has established herself as an important emerging performance artist in New York City, with international tours, and glowing reviews in the New York Times. She is a dynamic presence who combines a variety of performance genres into original and compelling work.
Erin recently starred in the NYC premiere of Tennessee Williams’ Green Eyes at the Hudson Hotel. She is a series regular on LOGO’s Jeffery and Cole Casserole TV show. Her solo musical, Puppy Love: A Stripper’s Tail played an extended run at PS 122. She is a company member of Half Straddle and her work in FAMILY was heralded as “the scariest performance of the year” in 2009 by Time Out NY.
Erin Markey
NY PRESS: Show Me Your Guts
TimeOut New York: Southern discomfort
Fall 2011
Sabrina Raaf
Sculptor/Installation artist, October 24 - 26, 2011
Host: John Marshall
Sabrina Raaf is a Chicago-based artist who works in both experimental sculptural media and photography. She is a producer of creative machines & machines that independently make art when cross-pollinated with human interaction.
Raaf’s work exposes the tension between our desire for technological autonomy and the struggle to retain human emotion. Her work challenges common perceptions of technological utopia. She is an Associate Professor in the School of Art and Design at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her work has been shown at the Stefan Stux Gallery in NY, the Kunsthaus Graz in Austria, at the Museum Tinguely in Basel, Switzerland, the San Jose Museum, the Oboro Art Center in Montreal and at ISEA (the International Symposium of Electronic Arts) among other exhibitions.
Fall 2011
Jerry Bleem
Sculptor, September 29 - 30, 2011
Host: Anne Mondro
Jerry Bleem focuses on using alternative materials with traditional craft techniques to create contemporary sculptural work. He crochets USA flags into sculptural forms and builds amazing vessels out of staples.
Fall 2011
Erica Mott
Installation Artist/Performance Artist, September 26 - 30, 2011
Host: Holly Hughes
Erica Mott is an installation and performance maker, puppeteer and community- based cultural worker who through a variety of body based sculptural forms (mask, costume, object), transforms discarded materials and disregarded spaces. Using the tools of humor and surprise, she captures and heightens the magic and mystery of the mundane and invites communities to re-view and re-envision shared spaces and practices. She endeavors to find universality that may be communicated across social, economic, and cultural boundaries.
[vimeo]20614333[/vimeo]
Fall 2011
Stacey Steers
Animator/Filmmaker, September 20 - 21, 2011
Host: Heidi Kumao
Stacey Steers’ films are created from a labor-intensive process of sequencing thousands of handmade works on paper, whether collages or individually painted drawings. She spends several years creating artwork for each film, typically eight distinct, unique images for every second of animation. She has shown her work in festivals across the country.
Fall 2011
Mark Fisher
Industrial Designer, September 19 - 21, 2011
Host: Nick Tobier
Northwestern Global Health Foundation’s mission is to design, develop and distribute medical devices specifically targeted for the developing world. Mark takes the results of academic research and creates hardware and software to solve real world problems such as extreme low cost infectious disease diagnosis in rural Africa through sourcing strategies and sourcing selections for both the devices and disposables.
Northwestern Global Health Foundation
Fall 2011
John Biewen
Sound Artist, September 13 - 15, 2011
Host: Stephanie Rowden
John Biewen directs Duke University’s audio program at the Center for Documentary Studies, where he teaches and produces documentary work for NPR, Public Radio International, and other audiences. His recent book project, Reality Radio: Telling True Stories in Sound, collects essays by influential and innovative audio documentary practitioners, including Ira Glass, This American Life; Jad Abumrad, Radio Lab; Rick Moody, and Jay Allison.
Center for Documentary Studies
Amazon.com - Reality Radio: Telling True Stories in Sound
Winter 2011
Jacques Rancière
Conceptual Artist, March 31 - April 1, 2011
Hosting in Partnership with Department of Romance Languages & Literatures
Host: Rachel TenHaaf
Jacques Rancière is Professor Emeritus at the Université de Paris (St. Denis). He is known for his sometimes remote position in contemporary French thought; operating from the humble motto that the cobbler and the university dean are equally intelligent, Jacques Rancière has freely compared the works of such known luminaries as Plato, Aristotle, Deleuze and others with relatively unknown thinkers like Joseph Jacototy and Gabriel Gauny.
Jacques Rancière - Wikipedia
Jacques Rancière: Focusing on the work of Jacques Rancière.
Jacques Rancière - Professor of Philosophy - Biography
Winter 2011
Telcosystems
Moving Image Artists, March 22-27, 2011
Telcosystems (Gideon Kiers, David Kiers and Lucas van der Velden)
Hosting in Partnership with the Ann Arbor Film Festival
Host: David Dinell
Gideon Kiers, David Kiers and Lucas van der Velden are the founding members of Telcosystems. In its audiovisual works Telcosystems installations and films focus on real-time, self-structuring, generative processes that fuse the auditive and visual domains into one immersive spatial experience that explores the limits of the human sensory apparatus. The software they write enables them to compose ever-evolving audiovisual worlds. Their work has been shown at museums, galleries and festivals nationally and internationally. Their film LOUDTHINGS received the Gus Van Sant Award for Best Experimental Film at the Ann Arbor Film Festival 2009 and the Grand Prix 2008 at 25 FPS festival in Zagreb Croatia.
The PLAY Blog takes you inside A&D’s community of makers, with posts by students, faculty and staff.
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