Creative Matters Lecture Series, 2019-2020
2019-2020 Creative Matters lecture series
The Creative Matters lecture series seeks to demonstrate that creativity is not only at the core of all research and discovery, but also central to our human experience. The exciting lineup of invited speakers includes artists, thinkers, builders, and doers who challenge conventional thinking about creativity, science, and artistic expression, and borrow from a range of influences and disciplines in their work.
Click here for the current Creative Matters lecture series lineup.
Janet Echelman, sculptor
Thursday, September 5, 2019
5:30 PM
Room 240 of Art Building West
Janet Echelman sculpts at the scale of buildings and city blocks. Her billowing works of art transform with wind and light, and shift from being “an object you look at, into an experience you can get lost in.”
Echelman’s mesmerizing work sits at the intersection of sculpture, architecture, urban design, material science, structural and aeronautical engineering, and computer science. Using unlikely materials from aramid fiber to atomized water particles, she combines ancient craft with computational design software to create artworks that have become focal points for urban life on five continents. Her TED talk, Taking Imagination Seriously, has over two million views.
Anne Bogart, theater director
Friday, October 25, 2019
7:00 PM
Strauss Hall, Hancher
Co-sponsored by Hancher
Anne Bogart is one of the three Co-Artistic Directors of SITI Company, which she founded with Japanese director Tadashi Suzuki in 1992. She is a professor of theater at Columbia University, where she runs the Graduate Directing Program. She was a recipient of a Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, the Richard B. Fisher Award, a USA Fellowship, a Rockefeller Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and received the 2016 Alfred Drake Award from Brooklyn College. Recent works with SITI include Chess Match, The Theater is a Blank Page, Steel Hammer, Persians, A Rite, Café Variations, Trojan Women, American Document, Antigone, Freshwater, Under Construction, Who Do You Think You Are, Radio Macbeth and much more.
Bogart will be on campus to direct The Bacchae, presented at Hancher Auditorium on October 26.
Rachel Grimes, pianist and composer
Wednesday, October 30, 2019
5:30 PM
Voxman Recital Hall
Co-sponsored by Witching Hour
Heralded “one of American independent music’s few truly inspired technicians” by WIRE magazine, Rachel Grimes is a pianist, composer, and arranger based in Kentucky. She creates music for chamber ensembles, orchestras, film, and collaborative live performances. Her work has been performed by ensembles such as the Louisville Orchestra, Kansas City Symphony, Knoxville Symphony, A Far Cry, Longleash and the Dublin Guitar Quartet.
This event is co-sponsored by Witching Hour.
Rosanne Cash, singer/songwriter
Friday, February 7, 2020
7:00 PM
Hancher’s Hadley Stage
Co-sponsored by Hancher
One of the country’s pre-eminent singer/songwriters, Rosanne Cash has released 15 albums of extraordinary songs that have earned four GRAMMY Awards and 11 nominations. She is also an author whose four books include the best-selling memoir Composed, which the Chicago Tribune called “one of the best accounts of an American life you’ll likely ever read.” Her essays have appeared in The New York Times, Rolling Stone, the Oxford-American, the Nation and many more publications. This event is co-sponsored by Hancher.
Victor Quijada, choreographer
Thursday, February 13, 2020
7:00 PM
Strauss Hall, Hancher
Co-sponsored by Hancher
From the hip-hop clubs of his native Los Angeles to a performance career with acclaimed postmodern and ballet companies such as THARP!, Ballet Tech, and Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montréal, Victor Quijada was recognized as a magnetic and expansive dancer by the age of 26. He has a rare perspective on a large spectrum of dance, possessing knowledge and experience that spans from the street corner to the concert hall. Quijada’s work eloquently re-imagines, deconstructs, and applies choreographic principles to hip-hop ideology, examining humanity through a unique fusion of aesthetics. Victor founded RUBBERBANDance Group in 2002.
Lewis Hyde
Wednesday, March 25, 2020
5:30 PM
Room 240 of Art Building West
This event is cancelled.
Lewis Hyde is a poet, essayist, translator, and cultural critic with a particular interest in the public life of the imagination. His 1983 book, The Gift, illuminates and defends the non-commercial portion of artistic practice. Trickster Makes This World (1998) uses a group of ancient myths to argue for the disruptive intelligence that all cultures need if they are to remain lively and open to change. Common as Air (2010) is a spirited defense of our “cultural commons,” that vast store of ideas, inventions, and works of art that we have inherited from the past and continue to enrich in the present. Hyde’s most recent book, A Primer for Forgetting, explores the many situations in which forgetfulness is more useful than memory—in myth, personal psychology, politics, art & spiritual life. A MacArthur Fellow and former director of undergraduate creative writing at Harvard University, Hyde taught creative writing and American literature for many years at Kenyon College.