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12/06/2017 11:01 PMKevin Conley, a writer and editor who has covered contemporary art for The New Yorker, Vogue, New York Times Magazine, Wall Street Journal, and Town & Country, will be the guest speaker on Thursday, Dec. 14 at Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts of the University of New Haven.
The lecture, the final in the fall series hosted by the college, is in the Chauncey Stillman Gallery, 84 Lyme Street, Old Lyme. There is a pre-talk reception at 5 p.m. with the lecture beginning at 6 p.m. Reservations are $15 for the reception and lecture and can be made at www.lymeacademy.edu. Seating is limited.
Ask most museum-goers and art lovers to picture an artist at work and the image they’ll probably conjure is a solitary one—Vincent Van Gogh in the cornfields at Arles, Andrew Wyeth at Chadd’s Ford, Alice Neel in her Harlem apartment—but for working artists reporting to their place of business, the daily reality is usually more crowded and convivial. For Conley, over the course of decades as a museum and gallery visitor, art critic, and author, the idiosyncrasies he’s noticed in his own history of studio visits with solitary working artists have amazed and amused him—from the productive chaos of Walton Ford’s studio in the Berkshires to the evocative clutter of Betye Saar’s working home in Laurel Canyon to the busy magazine-like atmosphere of Hank Willis Thomas’s Chelsea warehouse. Conley is equally perceptive in his observations of the artist studio system: How much should the hand of artist be involved in the production of the actual objects of art? Can artists be happy having their sculptures made by fabricators in another state? Must they paint every inch of the canvas or can studio assistants fill in the busy background patterns, saving the more complex passages for the artists to do themselves? Complex questions and astute observations from an experienced observer will be presented at this talk.
The lecture is offered through the college’s Center for Arts Programming, established to enrich the quality of life throughout the region by developing a robust and dynamic experience in the arts.