CIVA is privileged to have the following presenters join us for our 2011 Biennial Conference.
Wayne Adams is a Brooklyn-based artist and writer who received his B.F.A. from Calvin College and M.F.A. from Washington University in St. Louis in 2000. Adams has exhibited throughout the Midwest, New York, and Vienna, Austria. Recent shows include: “Directional” Union University Art Gallery (2011); “Adams | Miracle” STOREFRONT Gallery, New York (2010); “Portable Caves” HKJB, Long Island City, New York (2010); and “The Strange Place” Alogon Gallery, Chicago (2008). .
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David Adey graduated with a B.A. in visual art from Point Loma Nazarene University in 1994 and an M.F.A. in Sculpture from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2002. His work has been recently featured in the: 2010 California Biennial, Orange County Museum of Art; Here Not There: San Diego Art Now, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego; ZOOM, the Torrance Art Museum; “John Henry,” at the La Jolla Athenaeum and Luis De Jesus Los Angeles. In addition, his work has been included in exhibitions at Biola University, Quint Contemporary Art, La Jolla, Fullerton College, Wingnall Museum of Contemporary Art at Chafey College, Cannon Gallery in Carlsbad, California, as well as group exhibitions in Miami, Detroit, Boston, and Berlin. His work has appeared in publications such as Art in America, ArtLTD., LA Weekly, Wired Magazine, The Huffington Post, The San Diego Union Tribune, and San Diego City Beat. David is currently Associate Professor in the Department of Art and Design at Point Loma Nazarene University, where he teaches sculpture, 3D design, contemporary art seminar, graphic design and illustration. He is a recipient of the 2010-2011 San Diego Art Prize in the Emerging Artist category.
Lynn Aldrich is a visual artist who makes sculpture and installations. Her M.F.A. is from Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, and she currently advises graduate students at Azusa Pacific University. Her work is exhibited nationally and internationally and is in prominent collections such as the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Calder Foundation, New York, and the Jereann Cheney Collection, Houston. She is the recipient of awards including the City of Los Angeles Individual Artist Fellowship and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art Purchase Award. Because of interests in literature and theology, she writes and speaks on contemporary art and Judeo-Christian spirituality. Her essay on sculpture, “What’s the Matter with Matter?,” is included in Beholding the Glory: Incarnation Through the Arts, edited by Jeremy Begbie, Cambridge University, and she was recently a guest speaker at Sage Chapel, Cornell University.
Dan Callis is a visual artist/educator residing in Southern California. His work includes painting, drawing, and installation. He received his M.F.A. from Claremont Graduate University. Since 1987, he has served in the Art Department of Biola University, where he is currently Professor of Drawing and Painting. He has also served as adjunct professor or visiting lecturer at numerous institutions including University of Southern California, Claremont Graduate University, CSU Long Beach, UCLA, UC Santa Barbara, and Loyola Marymount University. In addition to his individual studio practice, he has collaborated extensively, including partnering with individuals with physical and developmental disabilities, as well as working on projects with a field biologist in Baja, Mexico, a sociologist in Las Vegas, and a theologian from Duke Divinity School. His latest collaboration is with an Orange County-based poet and musician.
Dayton Castleman was born in New Orleans, received his B.A. in Art from Belhaven University, has worked extensively in Philadelphia, and now resides in Chicago, where he received his M.F.A. from the School of the Art Institute. He has installed work at numerous venues in Philadelphia, and has exhibited his work in Chicago at Co-Prosperity Sphere, DePaul University Museum, and Jennifer Norback Gallery, as well as participating in and curating exhibitions at Alogon, Spoke, and The Zhou B. Art Center. He has shown work at the International Sculpture Center in New Jersey and at galleries from Los Angeles, to New York, to Rotterdam. Dayton teaches sculpture, drawing, and digital media at Trinity Christian College near Chicago. Dayton, his wife Karen, and daughter Anna live in Oak Park, Illinois.
John K. Chan is an environmental designer with a portfolio of architectural work ranging from idiosyncratic residential structures to large scale master planning and institutional buildings. As a designer, he has contributed to an array of award-winning buildings and notable projects including: The UCSB Intercollegiate Athletics Building; The U.S. Alaska State Capital Competition; the UCSD Price Center Expansion; and the Tata Motors Nano Car Plant, a one thousand acre master plan development in India. A LEED Accredited Professional and an Associate Member of the American Institute of Architects, John recieved his B.A. from the USC School of Architecture. In 2008, he established Formation Association, an environmental design collaborative investigating the meaningful integration of ecological intelligence within the collaborative dialogue of design. John was selected by the Biola University Art Department as its 2011 Visionary in Residence. John is also a founding member of The Study, a Christian community building creative church practice in the Los Angeles area. As a creative Christian individual, John intently explores the interplay between spiritual formation, creative expression, and intellectual curiosity within the context of an evangelical tradition. John lives, works, and composts in the Silver Lake area of Los Angeles with his wife Grace, and their 3 year old son, Christian.
Lia Chavez was born in Ithaca, New York in 1978 and currently resides in New York City with her awesome Aussie husband, David. Lia trained jointly in painting and dance; the influence of both disciplines can be felt in her multimedia practice which integrates vibrant, large-scale photographs, videos, and live performances. Recent exhibitions of her work include duet show Hillman + Chavez at Affirmation Arts in New York (2008) and SCAD Atlanta (2010), and group shows Parallel Worlds, Detournement Venise at the 53rd Venice Biennale, 2009 TINA B. – The Prague Contemporary Art Festival, the 2009 Armory Show VIP program, Nightcomers at the 10th Istanbul Biennial, and Shot and Go: A Vision of Today’s International Photography at the 52nd Venice Biennale. Following a graduate fellowship in gender theory and visual cultures at Oxford University, she did her postgraduate studies at Goldsmiths College in London, where she earned her M.A. in Photography and a second masters in Art. Lia has given lectures on her artwork at various institutions including Goldsmiths College, SCAD Atlanta, UCD Clinton Institute Dublin, and Oxford University, and regularly hosts artist salons in New York.
Father Patrick Doolan is one of the leading iconographers in the world today. He heads an icon workshop at Saint Gregory of Sinai Monastery in Kelseyville, California. Doolan was trained by internationally renowned Russian iconographer, Leonid Ouspensky. Doolan and his workshop use traditional egg tempera and fresco techniques. The workshop is in the process of frescoing the interiors of two churches in France as well as a church in Northern California. These are lifelong projects. In addition to praying and painting, Doolan is a much sought after speaker who has given lectures and tours at the J. Paul Getty Museum of Art on a number of occasions.
Malcolm Guite was born in Nigeria and raised in Africa and Canada. He is a poet and singer-songwriter living in Cambridge, UK, where he also works as a priest and academic, lecturing on the links between literature and theology. He has published two collections of poetry; Saying the Names (2002) and The Magic Apple Tree (2004) and has also published poems in Radix, The Mars Hill Review, Crux, Second Spring, and the Ambler. His essay on literature and incarnation, is included in Beholding the Glory: Incarnation Through the Arts edited by Jeremy Begbie, Cambridge University, together with work by fellow CIVA conference speaker Lynn Aldrich. He is also the author of What Do Christians Believe? (Granta, 2006) and Faith Hope and Poetry: Theology and the Poetic Imagination (Ashgate, 2010). He has played in rock’n’ roll band The Crocodiles, traditional jazz outfit Ecu-Jazz, and is currently front man for Cambridge rockers Mystery Train. He has collaborated and recorded with composer/saxophonist Kevin Flanagan on the Rip-Rap jazz-poetry project and also Flanagan’s Oratorio The Ten Thousand Things for which he wrote the libretto. His CD, The Green Man, is out on Cambridge Riffs and iTunes. He lectures widely on the links between theology, imagination, and the arts.
Kevin Hamilton is an artist and researcher with the University of Illinois, where he serves as Associate Professor and Chair of New Media in the School of Art and Design. After growing up in South Carolina and completing his education in New England (RISD / MIT), Kevin eventually moved to Urbana, Illinois, where he has resided since 2002. His work has included interactive artworks for gallery and public settings, a symposium series about walking, and scholarship on such subjects as art pedagogy, interface history, public monuments, creativity, and collaboration. Kevin’s international speaking record includes presentations for the Dutch Electronic Arts Festival, the International Society for Electronic Arts symposium, Newcastle’s Culture Lab, and Glowlab’s PsyGeoConflux. His artwork has been exhibited at SKOR in Den Haag, Spain’s Cyberart and MADnet festivals, and the Rose Museum of Art at Brandeis University. In 2007 he received an Illinois Arts Council Award and co-received a grant from the National Science Foundation; he also worked with Piotr Adamczyk in an invited residency at the Banff New Media Institute in Calgary. Kevin’s collaborative work with HCI researchers led to the design and facilitation of workshops on prototyping and process at ACM conferences for CHI and CreativeIT groups, and he currently serves on the Board for the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities. He blogs at complexfields.org and vagueterrain.net.
Bruce Herman is the Lothlórien Distinguished Chair in the Fine Arts at Gordon College where he currently serves as the Gallery Director. He completed his B.F.A. and M.F.A. at Boston University and his art has been exhibited internationally and is housed in museums such as the Vatican Museum in Rome, the Armand Hammer Collection in Los Angeles, and locally at the DeCordova Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts. Bruce writes and speaks on a broad range of topics related to art and faith and serves on CIVA’s Board of Directors.
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Karen L. Kleinfelder is a Professor and Head of the Art History program at California State University, Long Beach. She received her Ph.D. in 1989 from the University of Michigan where her thesis won the Distinguished Dissertation Award and was later published by the University of Chicago Press as a book, The Artist, His Model, Her Image, His Gaze: Picasso’s Pursuit of the Model. A recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, she is currently at work on a book about the images of women in Picasso’s art. Her interests go beyond Picasso, however. A list of seminar topics she has taught at Cal State Long Beach include Surrealism and Gender, Bataille’s informe, Baudrillard’s hyperreal, mind/body/cyborg, real places/imaginary spaces, boundary crossings, and “Engendered Species.” Kleinfelder won the Distinguished Faculty Teaching Award at Cal State Long Beach in 2000. She describes herself as “an art historian at home in a studio crit as much as in the slide room; I thrive best when art history crosses disciplines and performs in unruly, hybrid ways.”
Greg King is a filmmaker and multimedia artist based out of Brooklyn, New York. He has wide-ranging experience in a number of artistic disciplines, and has exhibited his paintings and visual art in multiple venues across the country. He has a B.F.A. in printmaking from the Kansas City Art Institute, and an M.F.A. in painting from Hunter College, New York. While at Hunter he became more invested in filmmaking and digital video. For twelve years, Greg toured with the band rachelʼs, and created numerous films to accompany their live performances. He recently co-directed (with filmmaker David Teague) the feature documentary Our House, which had its World Premiere at Hot Docs 2010 in Toronto, Canada, and its broadcast premiere with The Documentary Channel. He directed, shot, and edited the dance film Chloes (co-created with choreographer Lea Fulton), which premiered at the 2010 Dance on Camera Film Festival at the Film Society of Lincoln Center. His numerous experimental film projects have screened internationally, including festivals in Ann Arbor, Edinburgh, and the Rooftop Film Series in New York. He directed, shot and edited the 14-part experimental film cycle “Rotating Mirror” which received a Jerome Foundation Media Arts Grant. Greg seeks to work outside of the U.S. whenever possible. He traveled to Uganda, Africa in 2009 to create a promotional video in support of the non-profit organization Pilgrim Africa, and worked with The Media Project in South Africa in 2011, teaching video production to African journalists.
Mark Labberton joined Fuller’s faculty in 2009 as Lloyd John Ogilvie Associate Professor of Preaching and Director of the Lloyd John Ogilvie Institute of Preaching after 16 years of service as senior pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Berkeley, California. Mark completed his Ph.D. in theological studies at Cambridge University and has been involved in ministry for over 30 years including speaking to a broad range of audiences, including numerous conferences and events for the Presbyterian Church (USA), InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, the National Pastors Convention, and the International Justice Mission. Just recently Labberton published The Dangerous Act of Loving Your Neighbor (IVP, 2010) and The Dangerous Act of Worship: Living God’s Call to Justice (IVP, 2007).
Brian Moss is the Creative Director of By/For (www.byfor.org) and is a candidate for ordination in the Presbyterian Church (USA). He has served as the Worship & Music Coordinator at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia and as the Director of Worship, Music and the Arts at John Knox Presbyterian Church in Seattle, WA. Brian has been working as a songwriter and worship leader for over 15 years, and is Master of Divinity candidate at Regent College. He has toured with Michael Card, Jeff Johnson, and others. You can read his blog at www.prayerbookproject.com. .
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Steve Levon Ounanian describes himself as “a self-initiated researcher into emerging technologies,” and uses collaborative experiments and public interventions to prototype future scenarios. These collaborative experiments question family, authenticity, and religion in the context of a technology driven age. Steve is a designer and performance artist who explores contracts between people, and enjoy collaborating, especially with unwitting participants. Through such collaborative experiments he generates videos, performances, objects, and situations that seek to unravel what it means for people to be human, together. Technology (from crude phones to synthetic biology) has challenged what it means to be human on a fundamental level. Somehow there is an element of ventriloquism or puppetry that occurs as we associate with this technology. Ounanian enjoys exaggerating this phenomenon, giving external techno-social identities agency and voice, watching what happens when they get out of control. Ounanian holds an M.A. in Interaction Design from the Royal College of Art in London. He has done performance pieces in the United States, Mexico, Japan, and throughout the British Isles including the Barbican Art Gallery and Tate Britain.
Janet Owen Driggs is a writer, artist, and curator. She has exhibited internationally, including in the U. S., Europe, Scandinavia, and Brazil; and has curated exhibitions and screening programs in the United Kingdom, U. S., People’s Republic of China and Mexico. A member of the Metabolic Studio team, Janet is the editor of Not A Cornfield: History/Site/Document, a book about Lauren Bon’s artwork Not A Cornfield (2005-2006) and has worked most recently on Strawberry Flag (Lauren Bon|Metabolic Studio, 2009-2010)—an artwork in the form of a veterans’ program that nurtured reclaimed strawberry plants using an experimental aquaponic system. Janet is a member of adjunct faculty in the University of Southern California’s department of Public Art Studies and a partner in the collective identity “Owen Driggs” (with Matthew Driggs), which curated the touring exhibition Performing Public Space in February 2010, debuting at Tijuana’s Casa del Tunel. Her writings have been published most recently in: How Many Billboards? Art In Stead; Hammer Projects 1999-2009; Heike Baranowski – Kolibri; and Art Review.
Brent Seales is the Gill Professor of Computer Science and Director of the Center for Visualization and Virtual Environments at the University of Kentucky. He earned his Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin and was a Postdoctoral Researcher at the French National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control, Sophia-Antipolis, France, before joining the Computer Science Department at the University of Kentucky. His research program is focused on digital imagery applied to challenges in surgical simulation and technology, visualization technology, and the digitization and digital restoration of antiquities. His research has been funded by agencies such as the National Science Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and the U.S. Army. In addition to teaching and mentoring undergraduate and graduate students, over the past ten years he has developed a media and communications internship program focusing on telling stories about remarkable research efforts and achievements. These documentaries have aired internationally and cover a variety of interdisciplinary, innovative, technology-based projects.
Astri Swendsrud is a Los Angeles based artist who received her M.F.A. in Art from CalArts in 2008, and her B.S. in Art from Northwestern College, St. Paul, Minnesota in 2004. She was a 2007 recipient of a Harvey Fellowship. Her work has been exhibited in solo and group shows nationally including at The Pacific Design Center, Black Dragon Society and COMA Alternative Space in Los Angeles, The Suburban and Spoke Gallery in Chicago, All Things Project in New York City, and The Soap Factory in Minneapolis. Swendsrud’s work investigates the intersection of personal and psychological association and response with perceptual experience. Her drawings and installation environments create fictionalized domestic interiors and social gatherings, focusing on atmosphere, architecture, and décor. In addition to teaching at Biola, Swendsrud also teaches at Otis College of Art and Design. She serves as co-director of the exhibition space Elephant in Los Angeles.
W. David O. Taylor served as a pastor for twelve years in Austin, Texas. Born and raised in Guatemala City, he studied at the University of Texas, Georgetown University, the University of Würzburg, and Regent College in Canada. In addition to editing the book For the Beauty of the Church: Casting a Vision for the Arts (Baker Books, 2010), he has written for Books & Culture, SEEN Journal, and Christianity Today. His primary art form is playwriting, though he is also quite fond of modern dance. He and his wife Phaedra currently live in Durham, North Carolina, where he pursues doctoral studies in theology and the arts, while she pursues the vocation of gardener, cook, and visual artist.