Art-A-Rama Week returns July 11

The Summer Studio Art Program at Skidmore College will again offer "Art-A-Rama" Week - a multi-day celebration of artists and their works - beginning Monday, July 11, on campus.

The celebration, which includes a special lecture by Brooklyn-based Chris Doyle, this year's featured visiting artist, as well as an artists' panel discussion and a series of noontime "Brown Bag Lunch" talks, is a way to acknowledge and embrace the rich collection of works and talent on campus during the Summer Studio Art Program, said Katie DeGroot, summer studio art program director.

Said DeGroot, "My aim in choosing visiting artists for Art-A-Rama Week is to introduce students and the community to contemporary artists whose artwork will challenge and expand their understanding of the creative process."

Doyle's illustrated lecture is scheduled at 7 p.m. Monday, July 11, in Gannett Auditorium, Palamountain Hall. Admission is free and open to the public.

Capital District art lovers may recognize Doyle as the artist who created the digital projections of skateboarders on the side of RPI's EMPAC building in Troy last year. " He felt images of carefree, exuberant skateboarders on the side of the build ing would be a way to 'break down any barriers the building might impose and invite the public inside'," wrote Bob Goepfert in the Troy Record.

A multidisciplinary artist, Doyle has had recent solo exhibitions in New York, Los Angeles, and the Taubman Museum of Art (Roanoke, Vir.), and has been featured in group shows at Skidmore's Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, and MasMoCa. His "50,000 Beds," a large-scale, collaborative video installation involving 45 artists, was presented simultaneously in 2007 by the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Conn., ArtSpace in New Haven, Conn., and Real Art Ways in Hartford, Conn. According to the artist, the project was intended as an exploration of the interdependent roles of art and tourism. It was collaboration with the three presenting organizations, the artists, and the hotel/business community. Forty-five artists/teams were invited to create short videos, each set in a different hotel, motel, or inn across Connecticut. The videos were then grouped and installed, 15 at each venue. 

Doyle earned a B.A. degree in fine arts at Boston College and a master's degree in architecture at Harvard.

Other Art-A-Rama events include the following. Admission is free and open to the public.

-Tuesday, July 12, noon, Davis Auditorium, Palamountain Hall - Brown Bag Art Talk with Doyle.

-Thursday, July 14, noon, Saisselin Art Building, Room 308 - Brown Bag Art Talk with Josh Blackwell, known for his recent focus on plastic bags. Says the artist, "Plastic bags are the second most common form of litter in the world, after cigarette butts. They symbolize the ambiguous nature of capitalism, with its great abundance and great squalor. I started embroidering plastic bags during a residency in 2004?." He exhibited "Paper and Plastic" last year at the John Tevis Gallery in Paris. 

-Thursday, July 14, 6:30 p.m., Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery - "Dressing the Emperor: A Conversation on Contemporary, Conceptual, and Abstract Art." This panel discussion will feature Blackwell, Rochelle Feinstein, and Arlene Shechet in a discussion moderated by Ian Berry, Malloy Curator at the Tang.

Arlene Shechet is known for distinctive work that is grounded in forms, images, and processes of Buddhist practices but that shuns explicit religious references. Without irony or devotional creed, Shechter explores how the materials and making of sculpture and drawing can embody aspects of spiritual practices.

-Friday, July 15, noon, Saisselin, Room 308 - Brown Bag Art Talk with Rochelle Feinstein. The New York City-based artist earned acclaim for her new series titled "The Estate of Rochelle F.," inspired by the economic downturn. In 2009, Feinstein surveyed her studio's assets and vowed to optimize these resources by recombining them into a new body of work. She chose not to spend additional money on this work and promised to use maximal material and minimal gesture. The series was exhibited this spring at On Stellar Rays in New York City. The New Yorker called it "the most rollicking show in town?.Rauschenberg's "Combines" go recessionista."

Three additional events extend "Art-A-Rama" week beyond seven days: 

-Monday, July 18, noon, Saisselin, Room 308 - Brown Bag Art Talk with painter RJ Calabrese.

-Tuesday, July 19, 4:30 p.m., Schick Art Gallery - Reception for "Installation 101" with artist Elana Herzog, known for making work in which she attaches found textiles to constructed wall panels using thousands of metal staples. Her work comments on the history of labor, capital, industrialization, and technology.

-Friday, July 22, 12:30 p.m., Tang Teaching Museum - Brown Bag Art Talk with Nnenna Okore, an abstract artist from Nigeria whose works are inspired by textures, colors, and landscapes of her milieu. Okore will be featured in "Installation 101" at the Schick Art Gallery, on Thursday, Aug. 4. A reception is scheduled at 4:30 p.m.