School of Art Welcomes Multiple Guest Lecturers the First of March

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Pamela Harris Lawton, Silas Munro and Tivon Rice

The School of Art in the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences welcome art education scholar Pamela Harris Lawton, designer Silas Munro and artist Tivon Rice as featured visiting lecturers beginning March 1 as a part of the school's lecture program.

The School of Art Visiting Lecture Series is a 30-year-old tradition hosting renowned artists, designers and scholars to provide students and the community comprehensive experiences in the practice and study of fine arts and design.

This program is made possible through the generous support of the Walton Family Charitable Support Foundation and the Joy Pratt Markham Visiting Lecture Endowment. 

All are invited to the attend the virtual lectures next week and throughout the semester. The full semester calendar can be found at art.uark.edu.

• Monday, March 1 at 5 p.m. - Art education scholar, Pamela Harris Lawton
  
  Lawton is an artist, researcher and teacher. She will be discussing working with and within a community as holistic practice. 
  
  She was born into a family of artists, writers, dancers, singers, actors  and musicians. As a fifth-generation educator from Washington, D.C., she spent much of her formative years engaged in the arts with her grandmother, great uncles and aunts, cousins, parents, and siblings as a form of learning about the world and how to survive and thrive as a woman of color. 
  
  Her scholarly and artistic research revolves around visual narrative and intergenerational arts learning in community settings with specific emphasis on Black, Indigenous and people of color (BIPOC) communities. Lawton's artwork is grounded in social practice, seeking to illuminate contemporary issues, cultural traditions and the stories of people impacted by them. 
  
  Lawton earned a Bachelor of Art degree in studio art and sociology from the University of Virginia, an Master of Fine Art in printmaking from Howard University and Doctor of Education in the College Teaching of Art from Teachers College, Columbia University. 
  
  Join the lecture at: http://ow.ly/fa2d50DGJuO
   
• Tuesday, March 2 at 5:30 p.m. - Designer, Silas Munro
  
  Munro currently serves as the McIlroy Visiting Professor in the School of Art where he teaches Black Data: A History of Systems of Oppression and Visibility within Data Visualization and Design.
  
  His lecture, 'Bearing Witness: A Designer's Struggle for Integrity,' will discuss a lecture given by James Baldwin at Community Church in New York City entitled "The Artist's Struggle for Integrity," in the fall of 1962. The speech was later broadcast via Radio on WBAI. In the talk, Baldwin grapples with defining terms like "artist" or "integrity." He concludes that an artist or designer must confront the dilemma that they are "bearing witness helplessly to something which everybody knows, and nobody wants to face." 
  
  Munro will explore how his mutable practice as a designer, educator, writer, researcher, historian, poet, surfer and activist has attempted to create a form of integrity in the face of racism, homophobia, classism, stigma, and other forms of exclusion. This attempt at integration is reflected in his lived experience as a queer biracial man and the experiences of his clients and students. Munro is particularly interested in the often unaddressed post-colonial relationship between design and marginalized communities. His practice sheds light, opens up space, and speculates on new futures for more inclusive design disciplines. 
  
  Silas Munro is founder of the design studio Poly mode and is currently based in Los Angeles. Munro's design work and writings have been published in many forms at home and abroad. As an educator, he focuses on expanded design studies. He holds a Master of Fine Arts from California Institute of the Arts and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Rhode Island School of Design.
  
  Join the lecture at: http://ow.ly/5vPk50DGJZo
   
• Thursday, March 4 at 5:30 p.m. - Artist, Tivon Rice
  
  Tivon Rice is an artist and educator working across visual culture and technology. 
  
  His work critically explores representation and communication in the context of digital culture and asks: how do we see, inhabit, feel, and talk about these new forms of exchange? How do we approach creativity within the digital? What are the poetics, narratives, and visual languages inherent in new information technologies? And what are the social and environmental impacts of these systems? 
  
  Rice holds a doctorate in digital art and experimental media from the University of Washington, where he is currently a professor of data-driven art.
  
  Join the lecture at: http://ow.ly/as7Z50DGKA1