The Fine Arts Lecture Series is a cornerstone of CCA's vibrant campus culture, providing an exceptional platform for students to engage with eminent artists from around the world. This dynamic immersive series offers an unparalleled opportunity for students to witness the creative process, gain insights into diverse artistic perspectives, and interact with established professionals.

Through these inspiring interactions, students are not only exposed to cutting-edge techniques and innovative concepts but also encouraged to think critically, question norms, and broaden their artistic horizons. The series fosters an environment of intellectual curiosity, cultural enrichment, and creative growth, empowering students to evolve as both skilled artists and well-rounded individuals poised for success in the competitive world of contemporary art.

FEATURED ARTIST:

Welly Fletcher builds their sculptures using visceral materials to communicate in body-based terms like weight, texture, temperature, scent, and sound reflection.

 In her work, leaning and interdependent material-bodies form a queered field of resistance to the straight, right angles of the normative world. Recent artworks embrace themes of human-animal kinship, and the body’s central role within that inquiry. Fletcher sees the expanded field of sculpture as offering an increasingly-rare opportunity for an embodied, intersectional, poetic experience of otherness.

Fletcher received a BA from Dartmouth College and an MFA from California College of the Arts. She has presented recent projects at Pie Projects (Santa Fe), Northern Arizona University Art Museum (Flagstaff, AZ), Esqueleto Gallery (Oakland, CA), c3:initiative (Portland, OR), Riffe Gallery (Columbus, OH), and Wave Pool Gallery (Cincinnati, OH). Fletcher was a 2018 Artist in Residence at Headlands Center for the Arts (Sausalito, CA), was selected as one of Southwest Contemporary’s 2022 12 New Mexico Artists to Know Now, and was awarded an Individual Excellence Award by the Ohio Arts Council in 2017.  Prior artist residencies and awards include Anderson Ranch Arts Center, Sedona Summer Arts Colony, the Barclay Simpson Award, and the Murphy and Cadogan Award. Fletcher is a faculty member at the University of New Mexico, and a solo exhibition of their new work – SLANT – opens September 30th at Richard Levy Gallery in Albuquerque NM.

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