Visiting Artist Talks March 24 & 25
Art & Design
Breehan James and Jesse McLean will join us on campus as the NMU School of Art & Design Winter 2022 visiting artists on March 24 & March 25. Both artists have artwork in the Still Life exhibition at the DeVos Art Museum through March 25.
The talks are free and will take place in Room 165 Art & Design. James will talk on Thursday, March 24, 6:30 pm, and McLean will share short films and a talk on Friday, March 25, at 3 pm. Please sign up to attend. The demonstration has limited capacity. Click the sign-up link for details and event times. Masks are required for the events.
Breehan James's recent project, the Cottage Book Series, is a series of gouache paintings about her family cottage. Her late-grandfather and his seven children built this cottage in the 1960s as a retreat for family and friends to experience togetherness in nature. The paintings function as a portrait of this specific place which has been frozen in time. A place that is isolated yet connected to a shared experience throughout generations. The cottage is a retreat, a space for reflection in nature, recreation, play, and ultimately a place that fuels the imagination and spirit. The series of paintings functions as a tour inviting each reader into this cottage. It is a celebration of American "Up North" cottage culture and reflects time, memory, and experience.
A primary focus of Jesse McLean's work is the power and the failure of the mediated experience to bring people together. McLean is motivated by a deep curiosity regarding human behavior and the ways intimacies and connections are formed in an age of mediated experience. Recent projects explore the immersion into digital culture, the fraught relationships people have with technology we both rely on and resent, and in contrasting the finite capacities of the nonhuman with infinite human desires.
