Athens, Ga. – The University of Georgia Lamar Dodd School of Art will host the 2011 Lamar Dodd Professorial Chair lecture by Georgia native Kristen Morgin on Aug. 30 at 5:30 p.m. in room S151 of the art school. The lecture is free, and the public is invited to attend.
Morgin was appointed to the 2011 Lamar Dodd Professorial Chair earlier in the year. The Dodd Chair was established to honor Lamar Dodd, the first chair of what then was the art department and for whom the school is named. The Dodd Chair is an annual appointment to an outstanding visual artist who has demonstrated a commitment to teaching in the studio or the classroom. During their term, the holder of the chair holds the rank of full professor at the university level.
Morgin’s work spans the foundational disciplines of ceramics, sculpture, painting, illustration, collage, assemblage and drawing. Her lecture will address her background and influences and include many images and stories about her work, its origins and the reasons behind her art as well as the problems she encounters creating it.
Born in Brunswick, Ga., Morgin spent her youth in San Jose, Ca. She has worked almost exclusively in unfired clay sculpture since receiving her M.F.A. at Alfred University in 1997. She began teaching ceramics at California State University, Long Beach, in 1999, where she was an associate professor of art until 2010, when she left her teaching position to devote her time to her studio practice. Her work has been shown across the U.S. and Korea, and in 2011, it will be included in the 12th Istanbul Biennial. Morgin’s work can be found in the collections of the UCLA Hammer Museum and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, as well as in the private collections of Dean Valentine and Leonard and Susan Nimoy. Marc Selwyn Fine Art in Los Angeles represents her work.
Her appointment as the 2011 Dodd Professorial Chair will have Morgin heavily invested in what she describes as the long conversation that is keeping all of these disciplines separate and compartmentalized. “The different processes for various media help one another out, but I haven’t been able to really marry all of them together,” Morgin said. “I get them to live together for periods of time and sometimes have children out of wedlock, but full commitment is a little beyond my reach.”
“We are fortunate to have a professional artist with the creative range of Kristen Morgin teaching our students,” said Georgia Strange, director of the art school. “Her unique aesthetic sensibility and studio discipline are only two examples of the critical qualities she brings to the classroom discourse. I look forward to Morgin’s lecture and exhibition to see how she might reflect her Georgia childhood, studies in the Northeast with active studio production on the West Coast.”
Room S151 is located on the first floor of the art school, which is located at 270 River Road on the UGA campus. For more information, see http://www.art.uga.edu/.
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Note to editors: An image of “Spyder,” one of Kristen Morgin’s works, is available for download at http://multimedia.uga.edu/media/images/spyder_Morgin.jpg.