PHILADELPHIA (June 1, 2009) - The University’s MFA Program in Ceramics, Painting and Sculpture kicks off its 15th annual Food for Thought summer lecture series on June 12. Featuring noted visiting artists and critics, this year’s line-up includes Susan Stewart, Peter Krashes, Corin Hewitt, Nicole Cherubini, Kristin Jones and Lisa Sanditz. The series runs through July 29, 2009, and is free and open to the public. All lectures are held in the CBS Auditorium, Hamilton Hall (320 S. Broad St.). For further information, please contact program director Jennie Shanker at 215-717-6106 or Martha McEwan at 215-717-6489.

SUSAN STEWART
Susan Stewart is a poet and critic who has authored several books of essays on art, aesthetics and poetry including: The Open Studio: Essays in Art and Aesthetics (2004); Poetry and the Fate of the Senses (2002); Crimes of Writing: Problems in the Containment of Representation (1991); Nonsense (1989); and On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection (1984). Her honors include a Lila Wallace Individual Writer's Award, two grants in poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Pew Fellowship for the Arts, and separate fellowships from the Guggenheim and MacArthur Foundations. She was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2005. Stewart is a professor of English at Princeton University, where she teaches the history of poetry and aesthetics.
Friday, June 12, 6 p.m.

PETER KRASHES
Four years ago, Peter Krashes’ work shifted away from the magnificently painted series of distorted, liquid images that he had been exhibiting. Developers were given permission to exercise eminent domain to build a stadium in his Brooklyn neighborhood, threatening the community. He took on “…life as a community organizer with a work practice as an artist that embraces my efforts outside of the studio ... Put simply, I play a role in shaping what I paint before I paint it. A letter in my work is a letter that needed to be sent, a meeting is a meeting I helped to organize … As a result, the paintings are the last step in a process I have been engaged with from beginning to end … The imperatives I feel outside the studio are explicit so the outcome in the studio is particular and linked to the real world.”
Wednesday, June 24, 9 a.m.

CORIN HEWITT
In his recent performance/installation at the Whitney, Corin Hewitt turned the museum’s Lobby Gallery into a semi-private theatrical photo studio that he worked in 3 days a week. Equipped with food, shop tools, kitchen appliances, art supplies, photo and office equipment, Hewitt explored a range of material processes through “cooking, sculpting, heating and cooling, casting, canning, eating, and photographing of both organic and inorganic materials” creating a body of 71 photographs over the three month period.
Wednesday, July 1, 9 a.m.

NICOLE CHERUBINI
In an essay by Garth Clark and Mark Del Vecchio for the exhibition "One Part Clay," Nicole Cherubini’s work is referred to as “…not polite,” saying, “It is in its way anti-pottery, anti-craft and anticonventional beauty. She is an artist working outside the usual expectations of ceramics. The bridge between art and the design-look is missing. The work is still primarily clay albeit playing host to a wide array of other, mostly found, materials. Her craft is determinedly without finesse, cherishing its inelegance like a clunky badge of honor, but it is not without intelligence. She knows what she is doing and what disturbances she wants to create and just how far off balance she wants to keep the viewer.”
Wednesday, July 15, 9 a.m.

KRISTIN JONES
Kristin Jones’ most recent project, Tevereterno (Eternal Tiber), has been working toward revitalizing Rome’s river by transforming it into a site for the cultural life in the city. “Here innovative contemporary work will bring the river to life by drawing the public to a new experience of the Tiber. The evolving program invites international artists to create proposals for site-specific, multi-disciplinary installations inspired by the river.” Tevereterno is a solo project by Jones, who has also worked collaboratively for years with Andrew Ginzel. A statement made about their collaborative work applies to this solo project as well: “A fundamental sense of wonder at the perception of time and the natural world motivates us to construct contemplative work aimed at magnifying a sense of place and present.”
Wednesday, July 22, 9 a.m.

LISA SANDITZ
Living in upstate New York, single industry cities (Tannersville, Gloversville, etc) caught Lisa Sanditz’ attention. Her most recent paintings are based on single-commodity towns that she visited in China. In a TimeOut New York review, T.J. Carlin wrote: “Sanditz’s work is undeniably crowd-pleasing in its brilliant use of color, and she has a great excuse for this beauty: It’s the double-edged sword that forces us to balance our enjoyment of these scenes with our understanding that they represent our exploitation of the developing world. Such compositions as "Oil Painting Village," which subtly probes the idea of art as another item in a production line, inject a sense of self-deprecating humor. It’s refreshing to see work that’s at once a truly aesthetic experience and a political statement.”
Wednesday, July 29, 9 a.m.

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