M.F.A. series to bring leading figures in contemporary art to WestConn
DANBURY, CONN. —From the dreamlike interiors of painter Matthew Lopas and elegant line drawings of illustrator David Johnson to the extraordinary body of works over half a century by the influential American artist Lois Dodd, a world of contemporary art will be brought to Western Connecticut State University during the spring semester in a series of slide lectures sponsored by the university’s Master of Fine Arts (M.F.A.) program.
The M.F.A. series will feature presentations by eight visiting artists at WestConn over a four-month period from Jan. 24 through May 13. All lectures will be at 11 a.m. in Viewing Room 1 of White Hall on the university’s Midtown campus, 181 White St. in Danbury. The talks will be free and the public is invited to attend.
The opening lecture on Thursday, Jan. 24, will be offered by Matthew Lopas, a Bachelor of Fine Arts (B.F.A.) graduate of the Art Institute of Chicago and M.F.A. recipient from Yale University whose paintings explore mysterious interiors that often evoke an atmosphere of dreams and childhood memories. A student of artists Susanna Coffey and Rackstraw Downes, Lopas’ works – which have exhibited widely at galleries and colleges in the Northeast, South and Midwest – reflect what the artist described as “an imaginative gaze that leads to silent understanding.
“In the quietness of painting, discoveries are made,” Lopas observed. “The engaged eye and the motivated hand find that certain things just fit together.”
Other lectures in the M.F.A. spring semester series will include:
- Thursday, Feb. 7: David Johnson. Johnson embarked on a celebrated career at age 19 as a freelance contributor of drawings to National Lampoon and CBS Records, and honed his skills as an illustrator for the New York Times Book Review. His pen and ink portraits remain a mainstay in the Review and appear widely in Time, The Atlantic Monthly, The Wall Street Journal, Esquire and other national publications. Recipient of gold and silver medal awards from the Society of Illustrators in New York, he also is acclaimed for his book illustrations, including the award-winning children’s book “On Sand Island,” and a major storytelling video project that required 230 separate illustrations.
- Thursday, Feb. 21: David Cohen. Cohen, who holds a master’s degree from Courtauld Institute of Art at the University of London, has established a reputation as a leading art historian and critic. His published works include numerous books, exhibition catalogues, journal articles and commentaries in the press, including his weekly “Gallery Going” column in the New York Sun. As gallery director at the New York Studio School, he has curated influential exhibitions of works by Matisse and by contemporary artists including Ruth Miller, George Nick, Milton Resnick and Eric Holzman. Cohen also is much sought after as a guest educator and lecturer at leading British and U.S. art institutions such as the Tate Gallery, the Royal Academy of Arts, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Yale Center for British Art.
- Thursday, March 6: Norman Green. Over a career spanning more than 35 years, Green has exhibited his illustrations, paintings and design art at a wide range of venues including the Museum of Decorative Arts at the Louvre in Paris, and the Mead and Greengrass galleries in New York. A graduate of the School of Visual Arts in New York and visiting instructor at WestConn and Pratt Institute, Green has earned numerous awards from the Society of Illustrators and is a frequent exhibitor at the society’s galleries in New York and San Francisco. “Painting and drawing have always been a spiritual experience for me, and communing with nature gives me great joy and satisfaction,” he explained. “I present a piece of nature, more visible and focused, something you want to look at again and again.”
- Tuesday, March 25: Lois Dodd. Recognized as one of the most influential American artists in the latter half of the 20th century, Dodd was a founder of the Tanager Gallery, a legendary New York artists’ cooperative from 1952 to 1962, and later joined the Green Mountain Gallery and Fischbach Gallery as a regular exhibitor over nearly four decades. Now represented by the Alexandre Gallery in New York, she has exhibited widely across the United States, and her works are part of the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Cooper-Hewitt Museum, the National Academy of Design, the Wadsworth Museum and other prestigious art institutions. She was a member of the Brooklyn College faculty for more than two decades and currently serves on the board of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. This lecture marks her fourth visit as a participant in WestConn’s visiting artist series.
- Thursday, April 10: Daniel Adel. A graduate of Dartmouth College, Adel’s illustrations have been featured for more than two decades in national magazines and newspapers including The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, The New York Times, Vanity Fair, Forbes and Esquire. He has been a frequent exhibitor at New York galleries and museums, including three solo shows at the Soho gallery Arcadia Fine Arts, and contributed illustrations to the 2001 Lincoln Center production of “Ten Unknowns.” Since 2005 he has shown his works at the Atelier Rue Basse gallery and studio in the Provencal village of Lacoste in France, where he and his wife split residence along with their first home in New York’s Hudson Valley region.
- Tuesday, April 22: Jim Peters. Since the prestigious CDS Gallery in New York began showing his works in 1984, Peters has emerged as one of the masters of contemporary American painting over the past two decades. His works have earned numerous awards and acclaim from art critics of The New York Times, The New Yorker, Art in America and other national publications. A frequent participant in museum and gallery exhibitions across the United States and abroad, Peters’ paintings are owned by the William Benton Museum, the Solomon Guggenheim Museum, the University of Connecticut and other significant collections worldwide. He described his recurring artistic theme as the complexity of human nature: “My work is a search for a domestic space and a domestic sensuality. I paint my wife and my family from my mind and my imagination … The work is a constant revision, changing and honing images until fantasy and reality meet.”
- Thursday, May 13: Susanna Coffey. Coffey’s unique and iconoclastic reinterpretation of the art of self-portraiture has earned awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. She received an M.F.A. from Yale University, and currently holds the F.H. Sellers Endowed Chair in Painting at the Art Institute of Chicago. Her numerous exhibitions in the United States and Europe have included shows at the National Academy of Design, the Pennsylvania Academy and leading galleries in New York. New York Times arts writer Ken Johnson wrote of her self-portraits, “Coffey appears with delightful theatrical flair in all sorts of guises. These are not revelations of the artist’s singular, true self, but rather more like possibilities of selfhood or masks.”
For more information, call the M.F.A. program office at (203) 837-8881.
