Metal artist Jamie Bennett to present Raab lecture Nov. 1

Jamie Bennett, professor of art in the metals program at the State University of New York at New Paltz, will present the Rosanne Brody Raab Lecture Tuesday, Nov. 1, at Skidmore College.

Free and open to the public, the illustrated talk will begin at 6 p.m. in the Payne Room of Skidmore's Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery. Skidmore's Department of Art is sponsor of the talk. 

One of the world's pre-eminent enamellists, Bennett is known for creating works using unique, electroformed shapes that feature meticulous use of color and ornamentation. He is a three-time recipient of fellowships from both the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts, and is an Eileen Webb Fellow of the American Crafts Council.

He has exhibited extensively in the U.S. and abroad. His work is in permanent collections of more than 20 museums in the world, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; the Kunst Museum in Oslo; the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.; the Gallery of Western Australia in Perth; and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Bennett has participated in a number of pioneering exhibitions including "Jewelry Moves" at the National Museum of Scotland and "New Times, New Thinking Jewelry in Europe and America" at the National Museum of Wales. A 2010 traveling museum exhibition of his solo works underscored Bennett's influence and impact in contemporary jewelry.

Bennett joined the New Paltz faculty in 1985. Twice in the past decade he held residencies abroad: in 2005 at Istanbul Technical University, Turkey, and in 2010 at Hsinchu University in Taiwan.

The Rosanne Brody Raab Lecture was endowed at Skidmore by Raab, a member of the college's Class of 1955 and an art advisor whose firm specializes in the arts of craft and design as a way to showcase artists working in clay, fiber, metal, and wood.