Do Hybrid Artists Get Better Mileage?

?Art-A-Rama? Week to feature panel discussion

?Do Hybrid Artists Get Better Mileage?? Three prominent multi-media artists will share their interdisciplinary art-making processes in a discussion moderated by Skidmore College?s Ian Berry and scheduled for Thursday, July 16, in Skidmore?s Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery.

Free and open to the public, the event begins at 6 p.m. in the Tang?s Payne Presentation Room.  The discussion is part of Skidmore?s Summer Art Program, under the auspices of the Office of the Dean of Special Programs.  Participants are the following:

Terry Adkins, an installation artist, musician, and activist know for his abstract and lyrical works.  He calls his works ?recitals,? combining sculpturally based installations with music, video, literature and ritual actions, all designed to uphold and preserve the legacies of his subjects.

An associate professor of fine arts at the University of Pennsylvania, Adkins earned a bachelor?s degree at Fisk University; a master?s degree at Illinois State University; and a master of fine arts degree at University of Kentucky.

Michael Oatman, who is well known to the Skidmore community and in the region, having served as juror of the 2009 annual Student Art Exhibition at Skidmore and having had been the subject of an Opener exhibition at the Tang.  In 2005, Oatman?s ?A Lifetime of Service and a Mile of Thread? was featured at the museum.  

A renowned collage and installation artist, Oatman has been praised by the Albany Times Union for producing ?some of the most ambitious, challenging work on the art scene.? In 2007, editors of the Times Union voted him one of ?Top Three Artists? of the Capital Region. He teaches drawing and space in the School of Architecture at Rensselaer, providing fundamental skills while nurturing creativity, individual interests, and at times collaboration. He has been a Yaddo fellow and has received numerous residencies, grants, and honors.

Xaviera Simmons, visual artist and photographer. Simmons earned a bachelor?s degree in photography at Bard College in 2004, after spending two years retracing the trans-Atlantic slave trade with Buddhist monks. In 2005 she was a studio recipient of the Whitney Museum's independent study program, where she studied with Ron Clark. She has participated in numerous exhibitions at the Studio Museum in Harlem, including ?Frequency.? She is a cofounder of Tuffness Crew, a DJ collective.

Her work was recently spotlighted in ?Real Art Ways,? an exhibition in Hartford, Conn., resulting from a competition titled ?Don?t Trust Anyone Over 30.? The juried exhibition featured emerging artists from New York state and New England under the age of 30. An essay by Laurie Dahlberg on the exhibition noted, ?Simmons seems determined to make pictures on her own terms.  Sometimes freighted with history, sometimes buoyed by an animated spirit that is purely idiosyncratic, Simmons? work may not be black and white, but it does ask to be read all over.?

As Malloy Curator of Skidmore?s Tang Museum, Ian Berry organizes exhibitions, edits and oversees the catalogues, and arranges special events.