DANBURY, CONN. — Six artists whose paintings and illustrations have received critical acclaim in exhibitions worldwide will discuss their works and creative philosophy during the Western Connecticut State University fall semester Master of Fine Arts lecture series continuing from September through November.

Each of the six lectures, sponsored by the WCSU Department of Art M.F.A. Program, will be at 11 a.m. in Room 144 of the Visual and Performing Arts Center on the university’s Westside campus, 43 Lake Ave. Extension in Danbury. Admission will be free and the public is invited.

The series will kick off at 11 a.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 9, with a lecture by illustrator Aya Kakeda, whose eclectic images of whimsical narratives and worlds drawn from her rich imagination have appeared internationally in books, comics, magazines, posters, product labeling and store installations. She has staged exhibitions at galleries across the United States and in Canada, Japan and the Philippines, and established a diverse global corporate clientele ranging from Nike and Disney Hyperion Books to The New Yorker and the Hong Kong Mega Mall.

Kakeda, a native of Japan who now resides in Brooklyn, holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts (B.F.A.) from Savannah College of Art and Design and a Master of Fine Arts (M.F.A.) from the School of Visual Art in New York. Professional recognitions of her works include awards from the Society of Illustrators and from 3 x 3 Illustration, and selection to be featured in the annual publications of American Illustration and the Australian-based illustration book Curvy.

Other lectures in the fall M.F.A. series will present artists whose paintings are viewed in collections worldwide and whose illustrations have appeared in national publications and on Broadway. Featured lectures will include:

— MORE —

WCSU artist lecture series

Page 2 of 3

• Monday, Sept. 21: Painter and educator Joseph Salerno has shown his works at 21 solo exhibitions and 74 group shows in New England and other locations nationwide during an artistic career spanning more than three decades. A faculty member since 1991 at Johnson State College in Johnson, Vermont, he has shown his works most recently in the “Strange Paradise” national juried exhibition at the First Street Gallery in New York and in solo exhibitions at galleries in Burlington, Vermont, and Provincetown, Massachusetts. Recipient of a B.F.A. from Kent State University and an M.F.A. from Indiana University, Salerno has held residencies at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and the Stonington Painters Workshop in Maine, and studied abroad in Italy and France. Art New England critic Ric Kasini Kadour described Salerno’s interpretation of Vermont and Massachusetts landscapes in a 2007 show as “slow meditations on the land.”

• Monday, Oct. 5: Painter Glenn Goldberg, a graduate of Queens College CUNY, remains closely identified with his native New York as an art educator at the Cooper Union and the New York Studio School. Goldberg is an internationally recognized artist whose works are featured in the collections of leading art institutions including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum, Brooklyn Museum of Art, and Guggenheim Museum, all in New York; the National Gallery of Art in Washington; the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles; and museums in Atlanta and Kansas City. Recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, the 1996 Heilman Artist award, and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, his most recent solo exhibitions have been staged in New York at the Betty Cuningham Gallery and the Jason McCoy Gallery. In an interview posted on the Painters’ Table art blog, Goldberg described his search “for a quiet, somewhat mysterious action in my work. Philosophically, I’m interested in the union of clarity and imprecision.”

• Monday, Oct. 19: Painter Elisa Jensen draws creative inspiration from her native Brooklyn, where her paintings and drawings evoke a rapidly changing urban environment. “I concern myself with the movement and change, optimism and nostalgia, regret and discovery inherent in a transitioning area, and in New York itself,” Jensen said in her artist statement. A graduate of Smith College and member of the New York Studio School faculty since 1993, Jensen has exhibited widely at New York City galleries including Leslie Heller, Life on Mars and the Painting Center, as well as galleries from Maine to Florida and in Denmark. She received the 2009 John Koch Award in Art of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the 2010 Prize for Painting at the National Academy Museum, and a 2015 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship. Jensen was a member of the first group of artists to work in the “World Views” program at the World Trade Center and has lectured at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

• Wednesday, Nov. 4: Illustrator Chris Buzelli, a Chicago native who has pursued his creative career in New York since graduating from Rhode Island School of Design, has become widely recognized for his works drawn for books, Broadway posters and major publications including The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Time, Newsweek and Scientific American. Commercially successful in his illustration projects for major design and advertising firms, Buzelli also has exhibited his paintings widely at galleries across the United States and has received numerous honors from professional associations, including gold and silver medals presented by the Society of Illustrators. In describing his creative process during an interview posted in the online arts magazine The Great Discontent, Buzelli observed that “each piece is a challenge for me,” adding, “You’re never really satisfied. You’re always looking to the next piece to get it right.”

• Wednesday, Nov. 18: Painter Susanna Coffey, an M.F.A. graduate of the Yale School of Art who has served for many years as the F.H. Sellers Professor in Painting at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, pursues her artistic work in New York and has exhibited widely for the past 25 years across the United States as well as abroad in France, Spain, Italy, Greece and Korea. Her works are held in public collections in New York, Connecticut, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Ohio, Indiana, North Carolina, Hawaii and Spain. She has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation and the Guggenheim Foundation, and residencies at the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center and the Marie Walsh Sharpe Foundation Studio Program. Winner of the 2009 John Hultberg Memorial Prize for Painting from the National Academy Museum, Coffey is represented by Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects in New York and the Valerie Carberry Gallery in Chicago. In a review of her 2014 show at Steven Harvey, critic Hearne Pardee wrote in the Brooklyn Rail Review that Coffey “finds constant sources of invention in her own person and in the roles our society asks us to play. Yet as a true painter who works from observation, she finds ongoing inspiration in whatever light a new day brings to familiar features.”

For more information, contact the WCSU Department of Art at (203) 837-8403.

Western Connecticut State University offers outstanding faculty in a range of quality academic programs. Our diverse university community provides students an enriching and supportive environment that takes advantage of the unique cultural offerings of Western Connecticut and New York.  Our vision: To be an affordable public university with the characteristics of New England’s best small private universities.