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Virtual Artist Talks

Franconia’s Virtual Artist Talks invites the community to engage with visiting artists in a fun and informal setting. During the COVID-19 pandemic, these lectures will be held virtually via Facebook Live. Lectures take place on Tuesdays or Thursdays from 6pm-7pm.

Upcoming Lectures

Past Lectures

Thursday, August 3rd, 2023

Rotem and Omri Zin Tamiir

Join Franconia Sculpture Park’s Artistic Director Sharon Louden for a Virtual Artist Talk with Rotem and Omri Zin-Tamir. Rotem and Omri Zin-Tamir will discuss their artistic practices as well as their collaborative gallery show “Home Sick” that is currently on display in the Mardag Gallery at Franconia Sculpture Park.

 

Rotem and Omri Zin-Tamir immigrated to the United States from Israel in 2011. They both received their Masters Degree in Fine Arts from the Department of Sculpture and Extended Media at VCUarts in Richmond, VA, and a Bachelor Degree in Fine Arts from the Bezalel Academy for Art and Design in Jerusalem. Their collaborative work has been exhibited at Locust Projects, Miami, FL ; Artists Workshops Gallery, Tel Aviv; LIT Gallery Chattanooga, TN; they were recipients of the Artis Exhibition Grant, New York, NY, and featured artists in residence at ARC Chattanooga. Omri and Rotem live and work in Minneapolis, MN with their son Oliver where Rotem serves as an Assistant Professor in Sculpture at the Department of Art at the University of Minnesota and Omri has a sourdough bread bakery. 

 

Rotem & Omri Zin Tamir: Home Sick is a multi-media installation at the Mardag Gallery at Franconia Sculpture Park that will be showing until September 10, 2023. Click here to access the Virtual Artist Talk with Rotem and Omri.

Thursday, August 10th, 2023

Beili Liu and Yuliya Lanina

Join us for a virtual artist talk with Franconia’s 2023 Family Artists-in-Residence, hosted by Franconia Sculpture Park’s Artistic Director Sharon Louden. Click here to access the Artist Talk via Facebook Live.

 

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Yuliya Lanina is an interdisciplinary artist whose work exists at the intersection of visual art, performance and technological innovation. She creates alternate realities in her works—ones based on trauma, sexuality, loss and identity. A secular Jew of Ukrainian descent who was born and raised in Moscow, Lanina arrived in New York in 1990 as a political refugee. There, she established herself as a pioneering artist on the cutting edge by combining digital technologies with handmade media.

 

Beili Liu is a visual artist who creates material-and-process-driven, site-responsive installations and performances. Liu’s current research focuses on the complex ecological, political, and environmental concerns facing the Circumpolar North and the urgency of the climate crisis on a planetary scale. Liu states, “I am called to visit the Arctic, a place that embodies the sorrows and hopes of our shared planet.” Working with commonplace materials and elements such as thread, needle, scissors, feather, salt, wax, and cement, Liu manipulates their intrinsic qualities to extrapolate complex cultural and environmental narratives. As Kay Whitney wrote about Liu’s work in Sculpture Magazine: “Liu’s installations leap from obsession and repetition to something profound and expansive, merging the personal with the political…these remarkedly ordinary materials emphasize the disjunctive pairing of subtle beauty and cultural narrative.”

May 9th, 2023

Sook Jin Jo

Join Franconia Sculpture Park for a virtual artist talk with Sook Jin Jo. Korean-born, New York-based artist Sook Jin Jo 조 숙 진 is a multidisciplinary artist. Over the past 35 years, Sook Jin Jo has produced drawings, collages, photographs, sculptural assemblages, performances, installations, public works, and architectural design works. Originally because canvas was too expensive for her as a young artist, she started to use plywood and began to explore found wooden materials. Continuing her work with this medium, she has discovered infinite possibilities for painting, sculpture, installation, and beyond. She often chose marginalized sites for her outdoor installations and public artworks. Most of them are site-specific and collaborative, working with professionals and local people from diverse communities in many countries, including Sweden, India, Poland, Switzerland, Korea, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Brazil, and the United States. 

Sook Jin Jo: Witness III is a sound installation that will open in the Mardag Gallery at Franconia Sculpture Park with a public opening reception on April 29th, 4-6pm. Click here to view Sook Jin Jo’s artist talk. 

April 4th, 2023

Maggie Thompson

Join Franconia Sculpture Park for this online Artist Talk with Franconia’s visiting artist Maggie Thompson. Maggie Thompson (Fond du Lac Ojibwe) was born and raised in Minneapolis, MN and received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Textiles at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in 2013. As a textile artist and designer she derives her inspiration from the history of her Ojibwe heritage, exploring family history as well as themes and subject matter of the broader Native American experience. Thompson’s work calls attention to its materiality pushing the viewer’s traditional understanding of textiles. She explores materials in her work by incorporating multimedia elements such as photographs, beer caps and 3D-printed objects. Join us as Maggie discussing her multi-layered art practice and knitwear business as well as her exhibition “Loves Me, Loves Me Not” in the Mardag Gallery. This event will occur via Facebook Live on April 4, 2023, 6pm-7pm.

November 1, 2022

2022 Franconia Emerging Artists-in-Residence

Join Franconia Sculpture Park for this online “Dinner & Discussion” lecture with 2022 Franconia Emerging Artist-in-Residence Eli Brown, Bruna D’Alessandro, and Michael Legan. This lecture will take place on November 1, 2022 at 6pm online via Facebook Live.
About the Artists:
Eli Brown lives and works in Boston, MA. An interdisciplinary artist working in sculpture, drawing, and community organizing, Eli explores gender through time and intergenerational dynamics. His practice revolves around learning trans-ness as a lineage, and as an evolutionary phenomenon that is not always human. Eli’s research is both experiential and rooted in queer ecologies, which bridges queer theory and environmental science, and challenges the problematic foundations of evolutionary biology and speciesism which continue to inform our bodily experiences. Recent work has been featured at Flux Factory, deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Tailgate Projects in Tampa, FL., and Creative Time Summit X.
Bruna D’Alessandro holds an MFA from Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma. Her works have been shown internationally in venues such as the Center For Metal Arts in PA, the Museum of the Central Institute of Graphics in Rome, The Border Project Space, the 132nd Street Community Garden, and SLA Art Space in New York. She has held artist residencies at The Steel Yard in Providence, RI and at Salem Art Works. In 2020, she Co-Founded The Artist Gardener NYC, a public art program focused on revitalizing the community through exhibitions, art activities and educational programs in the community gardens of NYC.
Michael Legan (USA, born 1989) is an artist and musician based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. His interdisciplinary practice focuses on designing environments that excite awareness of space and that facilitate active listening and multi-sensory exploration. Through his working process he challenges long-established definitions of humanity, and involves wide-ranging mediums such as sound, sculpture, performance, and pedagogy.

March 15, 2022

Jose Dominguez and Yasmeenah Sideak

For this “Dinner & Discussion” lecture, Franconia will be speaking with the first two artists featured in the FSP Billboard Project, Yasmeenah Sideak and Jose Dominguez. Yasmeenah’s powerful billboard featuring 20 Black artists and curators from Minnesota is currently on display at the intersections of Highways 8 and 95 at Franconia Sculpture Park, and will soon be replaced by the colorful, playful, and subversive artwork of artist Jose Dominguez. Sponsored by the East Central Regional Arts Council, the inaugural FSP Billboard Project examines “Authority & Visibility in Public Space.” These artists will discuss their first large-scale public artworks and the importance of having positive BIPOC representation in rural Minnesota. Please join the discussion in a fun, informal setting moderated by Franconia’s Executive Director and Chief Curator Ginger Shulick Porcella.

April 12, 2022

Marcela Torres

For this “Dinner & Discussion”, 2022 Franconia Fellow Marcela Torres will discuss their upcoming project “Xochiotia”, an outdoor adobe sculpture that re-envisions Flower Mountain, a pre-conquest Meso-American afterword by engaging in sensorial ritual acts. This work will be created by and for the community and will be highlighted during the 4Ground: Midwest Land Art Biennial.
Born in Salt Lake City, Utah, residing in a transitory journey between Utah, Illinois and New York, Torres received a BA in Sculpture Intermedia and a BFA in Art History from the University of Utah, continuing their studies in MFA in Performance from the School of the Art Institute Chicago. Torres has performed at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts (Omaha, NE), The Momentary (Bentonville, AK), Fringe Festival (Detroit, MI), Experimental Actions (Houston, TX) and Time Based Arts (Portland, Oregon). Torres has exhibited work at Recess (Brooklyn, NY), Hyde Park Art Center (Chicago, IL) UW-Parkside University (Kenosha, WI), Tropical Contemporary (Eugene, OR), Petzel Gallery (NYC, NY). In 2021, Torres will be a resident at Creative Exchange Lab at the Portland Institute for Contemporary Arts and Denniston Hills Residency.
May 3, 2022
For this “Dinner & Discussion” lecture, 2022 Franconia Fellow Yumiko Ono will discuss themes central to their work (utopia, architecture, freedom in limitation) in context to the new installation they are creating for Franconia Sculpture Park.
ABOUT YUMIKO ONO
Ono completed her BA in Kyoto Seika University in oil painting and completed her MA in Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague and second MA honors in ceramics in St. Petersburg Stieglitz State Academy of Arts and Design. She was selected as a finalist of CAF award and Mitsubishi Art Gate Fellowship. Ono has participated in residency programs such as John Michael Kohler Arts Center, MASS MoCA, ISCP, Taipei Artist Village, Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park, Paradise AIR, Gyeonggi Creation Center, St. Petersburg Art Residency and Meet Factory. She has shown her work at “Epitomes” MoCA Taipei, “Organic Matter” Diem Phung Thi Museum, “Domani” National Art Center in Tokyo, “Artists’ House” BankART, Taehwa Eco Art Festival and “Home” Gallery Cube. Her works are in the collection of John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Imperial Porcelain Factory and Yelabuga State Museum. 
June 7, 2022
Lu Xu will discuss their work and collaboration with Natural Urban Forests on “Liang’s Tears” at Franconia Sculpture Park incorporating Miyawaki Afforestation methods. Ethan Bryson will expand upon this project and discuss the new community garden and forest space at Franconia Sculpture Park as part of the 4Ground: Midwest Land Art Biennial. Watch the Facebook Live recording here

ABOUT THE ARTISTS:

Lu Xu is an artist and curator based in Guizhou, China. She is originally from Guiyang, China. Lu has exhibited at Tapir Gallery, Berlin; Southfirst Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; Weatherspoon Museum of Art, NC; Elsewhere Museum, NC; Franconia Sculpture Park; Bodenseekreis, Germany; and Salem Art Works, NY. Lu Xu worked as the Curator of Gatewood Gallery and Director of Art Truck at School of Art, the University of North Carolina at Greensboro from 2015-17.

Natural Urban Forests (NUF) was established by Ethan Bryson with the focus to address the urgent need to restore native forest ecosystems. Working with Shubhendu Sharma of Afforest, Bryson learned the Miyawaki Method of forest planting. As the US partner of Afforest and SUGi, NUF creates forests utilizing this innovative method that enables forests to grow 10x faster at 3x the density of standard afforestation methods.

July 5, 2022
Please join Franconia Sculpture Park and artist Bryan Zanisnik at 6pm on Tuesday, July 5th at 6pm for a “Dinner & Discussion” lecture on Facebook Live to discuss Zanisnik’s solo show Centimeter, opening July 9, 2022 in the Mardag Gallery at Franconia Commons. Centimeter explores architecture, space, decay, and time through site-specific installation. Zanisnik’s multidisciplinary practice uses objects en masse to explore American culture, Freudian psychology, and familiar relationships. Utilizing found and repurposed materials from Franconia Sculpture Park, Centimeter promises to be an immersive installation residing somewhere between the archeological and the arcane. Centimeter opens at Franconia Commons on Saturday, July 9, 2022 with a public reception with the artist from 4pm-6pm, and will run until September 11, 2022. Watch the Facebook Live recording here

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