Thursday, April 9, 2015 6:30pm
PNCA
Arlene and Harold Schnitzer Center for Art and Design
Shipley Collins Mediatheque
NW 511 Broadway
Portland, OR
www.pnca.edu/graduate/c/vs
pncamfavisualstudies.tumblr.com
Letha Wilson was raised in Colorado, received her BFA from Syracuse University, and her MFA from Hunter College in New York City. Letha attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2009, and her artwork has been shown at many venues including Art in General, The Studio Museum in Harlem, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Bronx Museum of the Arts, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, International Center for Photography, and the Essl Museum of Contemporary Art (Austria). Letha’s work has been reviewed in Artforum, Art in America, The New York Times, and The New Yorker, among others. Letha has been awarded artist residencies at Yaddo, The Farpath Foundation (France), Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Headlands Center for the Arts, and the Marie Walsh Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program. She was recently awarded a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Photography and chosen as the Deutsche Bank Fellow, and was awarded a 2014 Jerome Foundation Travel Grant. Letha currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
About the MFA in Visual Studies program
PNCA’s Master of Fine Arts in Visual Studies is a 60-credit, two-year program that is interdisciplinary and mentor-based. The flexible character of this kind of program allows students to work within a singular discipline (traditional painting, for example) or to pursue a combined practice that bridges disciplines and media. This structure compliments PNCA’s educational philosophy of supporting independent inquiry and encouraging cross-disciplinary dialog. Our students also benefit from a dynamic national and international roster of visiting artists, scholars, and curators.
Graduate work at PNCA offers motivated students the opportunity to work closely with professionals from the faculty and arts community. In our mentor-based program students are connected with a studio practitioner who provides one-on-one support and guidance for their disciplinary practice.
The MFA facilities at PNCA provide private studio spaces as well as a shared community environment. While graduate students engage in independent studio investigation they also meet as a group for critique seminars and on-campus activities. The critique seminar class allows students to engage in ongoing critical dialog around their own work and the work of fellow students. This class combines critique, readings, and a visiting artists program that emphasizes intellectual investigation into the language of visual studies. Inquire here.
Visiting Artists lecture series
A dynamic visiting artist lecture series is a critical component of the MFA curriculum, providing students with the opportunity to conduct studio visits with artists, thinkers, and curators. Visitors have included Kristin Lucas, Amanda Hunt, A.L. Steiner, Ann Hamilton, Josh Kline, Tom Leeser, AA Bronson, Gregg Bordowitz, Julie Ault, Jayson Musson, Laurel Nakadate, Yvonne Rainer, Kanishka Raja, B. Wurtz, Kota Ezawa, Edgar Arceneaux, Anna Sew Hoy, Bob Nickas, Wallace Whitney, Nayland Blake, Eileen Quinlan, Andrea Bowers, Laura Heyman, Miguel Gutierrez, Alix Pearlstein, Kate Gilmore, Nina Katchadourian, Martin Kersels, Patty Chang, Mary Weatherford, Daniel J. Martinez, Sara Greenberger Rafferty, Arnold J. Kemp, Dinh Q Le, Richard Rezac, Larry Rinder, Lucy Orta, Jens Hoffmann, Jacques Rancière, Ann Craven, Stephanie Snyder, Adam McEwen, Adam Helms, and Gabrielle Giattino.
About Pacific Northwest College of Art
As Oregon’s flagship college of art and design since 1909, Pacific Northwest College of Art has helped shape Oregon’s visual arts landscape for more than a century. PNCA students study with award-winning faculty in small classes. Since 2008, PNCA has doubled both the student body and full-time faculty, quadrupled its endowment, and added innovative undergraduate and graduate programs. PNCA recently moved into the Arlene and Harold Schnitzer Center for Art and Design, flagship of its new campus on Portland’s North Park Blocks.
