Series Bringing Leading Figures In Contemporary Art To WCSU   

DANBURY — From the dreamlike interiors of painter Matthew Lopas and elegant line drawings of illustrator David Johnson to the extraordinary body of works over half a century by the influential American artist Lois Dodd, a world of contemporary art will be brought to Western Connecticut State University during the spring semester in a series of slide lectures sponsored by the university’s Master of Fine Arts (MFA) program.

The series offers presentations by visiting artists at WestConn over a four-month period running to May 13. Lectures are at 11 am in Viewing Room 1 of White Hall on the university’s midtown campus, 181 White Street. The talks are free and open to the public.

The series opened on January 24 with painter Matthew Lopas. Other lectures in the MFA spring semester series will include:

*Thursday, February 21: David Cohen, who holds a master’s degree from Courtauld Institute of Art at the University of London and has established a reputation as a leading art historian and critic. His published works include numerous books, exhibition catalogues, journal articles and commentaries in the press, including his weekly “Gallery Going” column in the New York Sun.

As gallery director at the New York Studio School, he has curated influential exhibitions of works by Matisse and by contemporary artists including Ruth Miller, George Nick, Milton Resnick and Eric Holzman. Mr Cohen also is much sought after as a guest educator and lecturer at leading British and US art institutions such as Tate Gallery, The Royal Academy of Arts, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Yale Center for British Art.

*Thursday, March 6: Norman Green, whose career spans more than 35 years and who has exhibited his illustrations, paintings and design art at a wide range of venues including the Museum of Decorative Arts at the Louvre in Paris, and the Mead and Greengrass galleries in New York. Mr Green has earned numerous awards from the Society of Illustrators and is a frequent exhibitor at the society’s galleries in New York and San Francisco.

“Painting and drawing have always been a spiritual experience for me, and communing with nature gives me great joy and satisfaction,” he explained. “I present a piece of nature, more visible and focused, something you want to look at again and again.”

*Tuesday, March 25, Lois Dodd. Recognized as one of the most influential American artists in the latter half of the 20th Century, Ms Dodd was a founder of Tanager Gallery, a legendary New York artists’ cooperative from 1952 to 1962, and later joined the Green Mountain Gallery and Fischbach Gallery as a regular exhibitor over nearly four decades.

Now represented by Alexandre Gallery in New York, she has exhibited widely across the United States, and her works are part of the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, Cooper-Hewitt Museum, National Academy of Design, Wadsworth Museum and other prestigious art institutions.

*Thursday, April 10: Daniel Adel, whose illustrations have been featured for more than two decades in national magazines and newspapers including The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, The New York Times, Vanity Fair, Forbes and Esquire. He has been a frequent exhibitor at New York galleries and museums, including three solo shows at the Soho gallery Arcadia Fine Arts, and contributed illustrations to the 2001 Lincoln Center production of “Ten Unknowns.”

Since 2005 he has shown his works at the Atelier Rue Basse gallery and studio in the Provencal village of Lacoste in France.

*Tuesday, April 22: Jim Peters, one of the masters of contemporary American painting over the past two decades whose works have earned numerous awards and acclaim from art critics of The New York Times, The New Yorker, Art in America and other national publications.

*Thursday, May 13: Susanna Coffey, whose unique and iconoclastic reinterpretation of the art of self-portraiture has earned awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.

For more information, call the MFA program office at 837-8881.