August 31, 2023

Hixson-Lied Visiting Artist series begins Sept. 7 with painter Morales

Arely Morales in portrait
Courtesy

Courtesy
Arely Morales

Seven artists will be presenting Hixson-Lied Visiting Artist and Scholar lectures this fall in the University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s School of Art, Art History and Design. The series begins with painter Arely Morales at 5:30 p.m. Sept. 7 in Richards Hall, room 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.

The lectures are free and open to the public.

Born in Jalisco, Mexico, and now based in East Texas, Morales explores issues related to identity, humanity and the vulnerability of the Latinx immigrant community in the United States. Through her large-scale portraits, she investigates the emotional complexity and psychological depth of the struggles and experiences that often go unseen.

Morales received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Stephen F. Austin State University in Texas and her Master of Fine Arts degree in painting and drawing from the University of Washington. She was awarded the De Cillia Graduating with Excellence Award for her research and in 2019, she received the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant.

Morales’ work has been featured in numerous group and solo exhibitions, including at Art League in Houston, Texas; The Masur Museum in Louisiana; the University of Texas at Arlington; The National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago; Centro de Artes in San Antonio, Texas; and The U.S. Embassy in Mexico City. She was recently selected for “Women to Watch 2024,” a group exhibition at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C.

Her work is held in public collections, such as the Dallas Museum of Art and the University of Washington in Seattle.

The remaining lectures in the series:

  • Sept. 20: Ben Moore. Moore is an associate professor of art at Luther College in Iowa. He makes two-dimensional, mixed-media works based on perceptions of reality and time travel.

  • Sept. 27: Sandra Fabara (Lady Pink). Lady Pink is the pioneer of female graffiti writing. For more than 35 years, she has been working as a graffiti artist, inspiring many young women and men to pursue the life of self-expression and creativity.

  • Oct. 4: Raymond Meeks. Meeks has been recognized for his books and pictures centered on memory and place, the way in which a landscape can shape an individual, and, in the abstract, how a place possesses you in its absence. He lives and works in the Hudson Valley in New York.

  • Oct. 11: Brigitte McQueen. Originally from Detroit, McQueen adopted Omaha as her home in 2007. Previously the manager of the Underground at The Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, McQueen founded The Union for Contemporary Art in 2011.

  • Oct. 25: Christine Hult-Lewis. Hult-Lewis is the interim pictorial curator at the Bancroft Library, the special collections library at the University of California Berkeley. She co-authored the award-winning “Carleton Watkins: The Complete Mammoth Photographs” (Getty, 2011).

  • Nov. 30: Terry James Conrad. Conrad is assistant professor and program head of printmaking at the University of Iowa and an Iowa Print Media Faculty Fellow. He also serves as the University of Iowa liaison to Frogman’s Print Workshops.

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 & Design at (402) 472-5522 or e-mail schoolaahd@unl.edu.