Seven artists will be presenting Hixson-Lied Visiting Artist and Scholar lectures this spring in the University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s School of Art, Art History and Design. The series begins with sculptor and musician Jay Kreimer on Feb. 15.
The School of Art, Art History and Design’s Hixson-Lied Visiting Artist and Scholar Lecture Series brings notable artists, scholars and designers to Nebraska each semester to enhance the education of students.
Each lecture takes place at 5:30 p.m. in Richards Hall, Room 15. The lectures are free and open to the public.
Kreimer is an improvising musician, instrument inventor and sound artist. He has been creating new musical instruments for nearly 30 years. He performs internationally, throughout North America, across Europe and in China and in India.
In 2013, he returned to India on a Fulbright fellowship to document street wedding bands. In March 2011, he was a finalist in the Guthman musical instrument invention competition. He has performed with Bryan Day for more than 15 years and the Mighty Vitamins for 20 years.
In the spring of 2019, Kreimer participated in an eight-show tour of Mexico with Bryan Day and Marco Albert, in support of the Albert Day Kreimer album “Mutations.”
He has created sound works, sculpture, photos and video for many installations with Wendy Weiss. He collaborates frequently with composer and performer Stacey Barelos.
He performed his water-based piece, “When It’s Gone,” at the De Young Museum in San Francisco.
He was the subject of a video segment of Nebraska Stories on NET, talking about his instrument-making work. This piece has been featured on the PBS national website ArtsCanvas and the PBS Newshour Facebook page.
Indian filmmaker Pooja Usha is finishing a longer documentary on Kreimer’s recently completed 2021-2022 Fulbright research project to make original instruments from ordinary materials in India. The documentary includes performance footage with a range of fine musicians.
He is also working with the University of Nebraska-Lincoln professors Jesse Fleming, Kees Uiterwaal and Jinku Kim on quantum mixed reality experiences.
Other lectures in the series are:
March 1: Chotsani Elaine Dean, ceramics. Dean is an artist and assistant professor of ceramics at the University of Minnesota.
March 8: Kat Richards, printmaking. Richards is a print-media based artist. Richards’ relationship with print media is an extension of their queerness, gender and body.
April 5: Robb Hernandez, art history. Hernandez is associate professor of English at Fordham University and the author of “Archiving an Epidemic: Art, AIDS and the Queer Chicanx Avant Garde (NYU Press, 2019).
April 12: Dan Witz, interdisciplinary. Witz is a Brooklyn-based street artist and realist painter and ones of the pioneers of the street art movement.
April 27: Josephine Halvorson, painting. Halvorson is professor of art and chair of graduate studies in painting at Boston University. She makes art that foregrounds firsthand experience and takes the form of painting, sculpture and printmaking.
April 27: Ryan Anderson, graphic design. Anderson has worked in the advertising industry for more than 25 years. He will present a workshop at 7 p.m. instead of a lecture.
Underwritten by the Hixson-Lied Endowment with additional support from other sources, the series enriches the culture of the state by providing a way for Nebraskans to interact with luminaries in the fields of art, art history and design. Each visiting artist or scholar spends one to three days on campus to meet with classes, participate in critiques and give demonstrations.
For more information on the series, contact the School of Art, Art History and Design at (402) 472-5522 or e-mail schoolaahd@unl.edu.
