Jamie Givens

Guest Speaker
27 April 2023 3:45pm

Jamie Givens is a professional artist and designer with 20 years experience in the animation and entertainment industry. His figurative and dynamic art has appeared in campaigns and projects for the Olympics, National Geographic Channel, ESPN, Nike, FX, and the Oscars. Jamie is going to speak in about creative process, being a professional, and living the good life while working remote as an illustrator, designer and animator from Todos Santos, Baja Sur MX. He will connect via Zoom and give a presentation of his work and answer any questions students may have. This will be an informative presentation as well as relevant to the working world of a creative.

Janet Delaney

Guest Speaker
9 March 2023 3:30pm

Janet Delaney uses research, interviews and photography to record the untold stories of cities in transition. Her first project bore witness to the 1980s gentrification of a working-class neighborhood in San Francisco and was published as South of Market (MACK, 2013). In Public Matters (MACK, 2018), Delaney documented daily life as it unfolded alongside protests and parades in Reagan-era San Francisco. Her color photographs of New York City in the 1980s was published as Red Eye to New York, (MACK 2021) She is currently completing SoMa Now, a record of San Francisco’s rapid transformation into an international center of technology and all of the consequences these new riches have wrought. Both honest and poetic, her approach straddles the line between documentary and fine art. Delaney is a 2020 Guggenheim Fellow. She has received numerous awards, including three National Endowment for the Arts grants. Her photographs are in collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the de Young Museum, the Pilara Foundation, the Oakland Museum of California and the Smithsonian Museum, among others. She has shown her photographs nationally and internationally and is represented by EUQINOM Gallery in San Francisco, California. Delaney received her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1981. She has taught widely and held a faculty position at the University of California, Berkeley for 15 years. Janet Delaney is an inveterate artist of communities and has a long career as an artist and educator. She has published multiple monographs from her years photographing various Bay Area communities.

Eli Durst

Guest Speaker
9 February 2023 3:15pm

Eli Durst was born and raised in Austin, TX. After graduating from Wesleyan University in 2011, he worked at the renowned fine art printing studio Griffin Editions in Brooklyn while also serving as an assistant to street photographer Joel Meyerowitz. Eli received an MFA in photography from the Yale School of Art and is the winner of the 2016 Aperture Portfolio Prize, a 2017 Aaron Siskind Individual Photographer's Fellowship Grant, and a 2019 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship. He currently lives in Austin, TX, where he teaches photography at the University of Texas. Eli has published two monographs of his work, The Community (Mörel Books, 2020) and The Four Pillars (Loose Joints, 2022).

Ray Sams

Creative Director and Digital Producer

Guest Speaker – FINE 3454 Motion 2 with Professors Travis Vermilye and Michelle Carpenter 

Cutting-edge storyteller committed to global brand identities across multiple platforms. Specializes in millennial mindset marketing, motion graphic design, post production and commercials. Track record of growing revenue, ratings and impressions for iconic corporations. Thought leader who assembles cohesive creative teams and turns concepts into solutions. Delivers a “strategy-made-visual” approach to accelerate efficiency. 

Creative Consultant
Implementation of creative strategies for network television, interactive devices and set design. Drive the creative aspects of business from conception to final presentation. Generate innovative and breakthrough ideas for clients using research and consumer behavior to develop creative strategy. Development of branding and marketing campaigns resulting in fresh, conscious, best in class output. Imaginative products that redefine the brand to the consumer while generating impressions and social media worth. 

Digital Producer
Developer of digital content for mobile, social media and emerging markets. Project management includes asset optimization, production efficiencies and automation techniques. 

Experience Director
Curator of unique on-brand experiential marketing, social media and branded entertainment. Proven use of analytical proficiency to convert design into dollars, impressions and ratings. 

Design Director
Successfully lead and implement network branding for on-air, on-line and interactive platforms. Developer of national, local and interactive network identity brand packaging. Creator of animated packaging and explainer graphics for news networks, community groups and small businesses. Responsible for the technical development of touch screen systems, studio/set design and weather and broadcast graphics. My change management process maximizes communication, increases productivity and develops your in-house creative talent. 

Digital Design Instructor
Coursework: Interaction Design, Motion Graphics, Typography, 2D Design, Branding, Narrative Experience and Software Guru. 

Website

2020 Reel

Guest Speaker: Kellie Smith

FINE 3555 Concepts in Sculpture | Social Practice with Professor Rian Kerrane

Kellie Smith is a 2017 UCD Graduate with an emphasis in photography. To Kellie, the best photo is one that has gone through an alternative process, shows the wear of life on the paper, and holds a story in the object itself. Since graduation, she has been operating a real estate photography business that specializes in 3D media and raising her two kids in Bailey, CO.

smith.kellie333@gmail.com

Emily Grace King

Guest Speaker – FINE 3500 Installation Art with Professor Rian Kerrane.

Emily Grace King is the Galleries Exhibition Manager at the Arvada Center where she oversees three art galleries totaling over 10,000 square feet, a 17-acre sculpture field, and the Arvada History Museum. Emily also acts as the department's registrar and organizes the Center's popular Holiday Fine Art Market.

Emily serves her city as Chair of the Arvada Arts and Culture Commission. She is a strong advocate in the community for public art and for civic investment in local artists at all stages of their careers. In addition to her career in arts administration and management, Emily is a practicing artist. While Emily works in a variety of mediums, her current focus is on creating encaustic monotype assemblies using beeswax from her backyard hives. The pursuit of creating her own artistic medium inspired Emily to learn to keep bees and led her to transform her outdoor space into a haven for pollinators, planting and cultivating the raw material the bees need to create wax for her artwork. In 2016, Emily founded the much-beloved community project Art Drop Arvada. Working with artists and art-lovers throughout Metro Denver, Art Drop Arvada creates interactive, grassroots events in public spaces that bring free, hyper-local art to anyone willing to hunt for it.

Emily Grace King Galleries Exhibition Manager Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities | www.arvadacenter.org | eking@arvadacenter.org

Lee Lee

Guest Speaker – FINE 3555 Concepts in Sculpture – Social Practice with Professor Rian Kerrane.

Lee Lee is an artist whose work explores the collisions between traditions and globalization while representing environmental impacts of our post-industrial, chemical age. She has developed a process-oriented practice that conveys emotional textures within communities facing environmental disruption based on direct experience in over 40 countries. Her current projects incorporate demonstrations of resilience by diverse communities as they face ecological adversity.

Instagram

William Johnston

William Johnston visiting artist in FINE 2415 Typography

William Johnston is a musician who somehow found his way into design. Finding this new creative outlet, he developed strong interests in typography, hand lettering, and branding. His passion for drawing letters has led him to paint type murals and commissioning hand lettering projects around Colorado. He currently works as a designer with an emphasis on branding at Consume & Create™.

Website

Jeff Becker

Jeff Becker
Artist Talk 4 pm, Feb 22, Arts 192
Performance Art Workshops Feb 22, 23 & 24, 2022
Contact: rian.kerrane@ucdenver.edu

Jeff Becker is a director, designer and sculptor based in New Orleans who specializes in site responsive performances and outdoor spectacles. In 1990 he co-founded CRISUS, a performance art group that utilized innovative kinetic sets, sculpture, film and machines. From 2003-2015 he was an ensemble member of ArtSpot Productions creating original theater that explored racism, abuse of power and environmental justice. Jeff has collaborated with several theater companies and artists including Cutting Ball Theater, Pan Pan Theatre, Hand To Mouth, Carpetbag Theater, Mondo Bizarro, Clear Creek Creative Thaddeus Philips and with choreographer Elizabeth Streb, developing “Ascension'' a 25’ spinning ladder machine that was featured in Trafalgar Square during the 2012 Summer Olympics. Jeff is the recipient of several awards and grants including an NEA RAP Grant, a SURDNA professional development grant, and multiple Big Easy Awards. In 2009 he received a Louisiana Division of the Arts Fellowship and a NEA/TCG Career Development Fellowship. Jeff was also awarded a MAP Grant for “Vessels” in collaboration with Rebecca Mwase and a Creative Capital Project Grant, NEFA, NTP Grant, NPN Creation Fund and NET 10 Grant for his epic performance “Sea of Common Catastrophe” More recently Jeff has worked with MacArthur Fellow, Anne Basting on “Wendy’s Neverland”, a creative story telling project in assisted care homes throughout Kentucky. His current touring projects include “Requiem for Stranger” with Vagabond Inventions, “Ezell, Ballad of a Land Man” with Clear Creek Creative, “Invisible Rivers” in collaboration with Monique Verdin and Mondo Bizarro and Ocean Filibuster with PearlDamour. Jeff is cofounder of Catapult, a performance laboratory dedicated to the development of original performance and innovative design.

www.setsalive.com

Teresa Castaneda

Guest Speaker
Professor Rian Kerrane, FINE 3510 Mold Design & Casting
Thursday 25 March 2021

Teresa Castaneda began her journey in the arts early. By the time she was 19, she synchronously earned a B.F.A at MSU, juggled a photography internship with the Denver Art Museum, was an alternate instructor for a professor on sabbatical teaching metalsmithing and senior thesis portfolio photography at MSU, represented by William Havu and certified as a trade jeweler at the Revere Academy jewelry arts in California. Her professional career spans from photo lab work to photojournalism, tabletop, weddings, portrait and portfolio photography, trade jeweler to private clients and jewelry stores designing, fabricating, carving waxes, casting in all precious metals, and cutting stones. Her drawings, invented style in abstract painting, photography, and sculpture have been invited in hundreds of exhibitions, books, and publications, such as the Denver Post, 5280, Westword “Colorado Creative”, and local newspapers. National recognitions include the National Museum of Women in the Arts, KABOOM! national non-profit, and twice by the National Endowment for the Arts with a grant for her invention in printmaking called “Crinkleism”, and recently for her positive impact on the community with the organization, she founded called ReArranging Denver / a zero use project sustained with scavenged materials. The project bridges communities and local businesses through creative reuse workshops contracted by Denver County, Arapahoe County, Boulder County schools, libraries, and art affiliations. Art made from the project has been sold by over 20 Denver and Boulder retailers, the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art and the Denver Art Museum. www.paintbru.sh

Samantha Kokesh

Guest Speaker
Professor Rian Kerrane, FINE 3510 Mold Design & Casting
Tuesday 23 March 2020

Hello! My name is Samantha Kokesh. I am the founder of the small business SculptingEchoes and a recent graduate from The University of Colorado Denver, College of Arts and Media. I am a sculptor, bronze & iron caster, mold-maker, hard-edge abstraction painter, paper-cut illustrator, cartoonist, enamel pin designer, fursuit maker, and knit comfy hats in my spare time. My work often highlights supernatural themes, the intricacies of nature, and the complexity of the human spirit.

Etsy, Kickstarter, Instagram: SculptingEchoes
Website: samanthakokesh.wixsite.com/portfolio 
Email: SculptingEchoes@gmail.com

Suzanne Faris

Suzanne Faris 
Professor Rian Kerrane - FINE 4950 Studio BFA Thesis
Guest Speaker
Friday 25 Feb 2022 

A Professor of Sculpture and former Chair in the Department of Art & Art History at Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado, Suzanne Faris earned her MFA in Sculpture from the University of Colorado Boulder in 2001 and a BA in both Visual Communications Design and Painting at Purdue University in 1995. For many years, her work has been guided by an exploration of physical engagement with space, textures, sound, and objects. She creates large-scale, and recently more intimately-scaled, work that often hovers around or engulfs the proportions of the body. It explores vanity, insecurity, projected identity, combined with intimacy, physical experience, and inclusion or intentional absence of a person. 

“Through my artwork, I am interested in creating acts of communication that are based first in intimate personal experience but reach beyond themselves and become part of a larger social and cultural dialogue.” 

Suzanne is actively involved with the Artnauts International Artist Collective. The Artnauts Collective focuses on issues of social justice and the power of a collective voice as a catalyst for change. 

Instagram: @suzannefaris1

Josh Blair

Motion Designer and Creative Director
Guest Speaker – FINE 3454 Motion 2 with Professors Travis Vermilye and Michelle Carpenter 

I studied Digital Design and Leadership theory at the University of Colorado Denver. After interning for an amazing motion and production house (https://friendsofmine.tv/), I went on to work in the broadcast industry for a couple of years and the audit industry as a Motion Graphics artist for a few more. 

Along with a day job, I balanced my own creative projects with additional freelance - including teaching design classes at CU Denver. Eventually, I got more offers for exciting unique work and I decided to build my own business as well as another with a few college friends. This allows me to work on other meaningful projects, from emerging brands and businesses, small or local requests, or a few trusted agencies who need an extra set of designer hands from now and then. 

Vimeo

Samantha Kokesh

Guest Speaker
13 September 2022 10:45 am

Sam is an alumni from the VA program who lives and works in South Dakota. She is a specialist in miniatures, mold making, cold casting, and reusable molds. Her workshop will provide students contact with a recent graduate who is doing extremely well with a new position at Monkjewelry doing 3D printing, casting and model design. She is also independently doing commissions for other artists and is entrepreneurial with her own business. Aside from a hands on workshop she will present her own research and career decisions since leaving CU.

Anna Kaye

Guest Speaker
24 October 2022 09:30 AM

Anna Kaye was born in Detroit, Michigan and now lives in Denver where she works in her studio creating drawings and paintings that are inspired by the natural world. She earned her BS in geology and fine art at Skidmore College in New York. She continued her education at Yale in painting, drawing, printmaking and photography. She earned her MFA at Washington University in St. Louis where she was awarded the Laura and William Jens Scholarship and a teaching on record position. Anna Kaye’s artwork is a part of international, private, public, corporate, and museum collections including Home & Garden Television’s "Green Home". Interviews and reviews include Colorado Matters, Colorado Life Magazine, Westword, and the Denver Post. She is the founder of Pink Progression and organizes large-scale exhibitions that promote social action and connectivity. Kaye donates a percentage of all sales annually to environmental funds. She is a former Visiting Assistant Professor and Co-Coordinator of Drawing at Metropolitan State University. Anna Kaye currently teaches at the Denver Art Museum and is represented by the Sandra Phillips Gallery in Denver.

Anna Kaye will talk about her hyper-realistic drawings, concepts concerning the environment, and her professional career. Her use of charcoal on paper, drawing combined with projection and drawing combined with watercolor relates to Drawing 1 techniques. Furthermore, Anna's presentation will inspire students' personal interests and how they can make a positive impact, inspire change and educate others.

https://www.annakayeart.com

Mariana Pereira Vieira

Guest Speaker
18 October 2022 12:30 pm

Mariana Pereira Vieira (b. Brazil 1983) is a multi-media artist and arts educator based in Colorado, USA. She received a BFA in Photography from Georgia Southern University and an MFA in Interdisciplinary Media Arts Practices from the University of Colorado Boulder. Mariana’s artwork has been featured in exhibitions at the Museo de las Américas, Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities, the Dairy Center for the Arts, Anderson Ranch Arts Center, the Center for Fine Art Photography, the Colorado Photographic Arts Center, Lenscratch, among others. In 2019, she was awarded the first Denis Roussel Fellowship from the Center for Fine Art Photography. In 2017, she curated the Colorado edition of The States Project for Lenscratch. Her latest project, Touching, received an Honorable Mention Award from the Center for the Humanities and the Arts from the University of Colorado Boulder. She is currently Interdisciplinary Media Arts Practices Coordinator at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Mariana Pereira Vieira will give a lecture/discussion about professional practices in photography based on her experience with several photographic, arts, and educational organizations.

https://www.marianavieira.com

Trent Davis Bailey

Guest Speaker
29 September 2022 12:30 pm

Trent Davis Bailey (b. 1985) is a photographer born and based in Colorado. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including a 2019 Film Photo Award and the 2015 Snider Prize from the Museum of Contemporary Photography. His work has been shown widely, including exhibitions at Somerset House in London and Robert Koch Gallery in San Francisco, and at art fairs and festivals such as Paris Photo and the Encontros da Imagem Photography Festival in Portugal. Bailey’s editorial work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, T: The New York Times Style Magazine, The California Sunday Magazine, SSAW, and elsewhere. His first monograph, The North Fork, will be published by Trespasser (Texas) in 2023.

Trent Davis Bailey will be giving a professional practices lecture/discussion with Advanced Photography I students, based on his experience with professional galleries and editorial photography for organizations such as The New York Times Magazine.

Meg Bailey

DAC Guest Speaker
15 September 2022 8 am

Meg Bailey is an Executive Producer at Zero VFX in Boston, MA. Over the past 11+ years, Meg has managed and produced visual effects/post-production workflows and content for countless commercials and feature films.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/baileymeg

Phen Sparkles

Guest Speaker
Professor Rian Kerrane - FINE 3555 Concepts in Sculpture- Iron Casting
Friday 30 April 2021

The Phen Wheel is an ongoing performance art series. When cast iron is poured onto a moving wooden wheel, it creates a shower of sparks and fire that rotate. This rotating liquid iron symbolize the artist’s connection to our planet and the sun. Phen Sparkles witnessed his first Eclipse in Totality in 2017 as a breathtaking moment. Watching the stars come out in the middle of the day changed him. Seeing the corona poking out from behind the moon is something that he will never forget. Reactionary sculptures such as Total Eclipse: Phen Wheel Reaction Sculpture celebrate and represent the total eclipse and the things that connect us to our planets and the sun. His sculptures are born in fire and grounded by gravity. Phen is a noted performance artist in the iron community and a Master Carver and Manager of Swanson Stone; a stone cutting and public art fabrication company. A graduate in sculpture from the University of Colorado Denver, his work deals with how we interpret the human experience and interactions that occur naturally. Creating timeless objects that speak for themselves is the true goal and his connection to the planet. https://www.facebook.com/Phen.Sparkles.Clown

Brian Ward

Guest Speaker
Professor Rian Kerrane - FINE 3510 Mold Design & Casting
Thursday 1 April 2021

Brian Ward is a Colorado native and CU Denver alumni. Graduated in 2013 with a dual Bachelors of Arts in Digital Animation and Sculpture, he is now an IT project manager by day and running a freelance art firm by night (and weekends). With his primary clients in the cosplay/costuming world, his use of materials and methods varies drastically depending on the demands of the project. Through years of experience and experimentation, he has built up a wealth of knowledge on mold making, casting, painting techniques, 3D printing, and how to make materials do what they were never intended to do.

https://www.instagram.com/wardraw_studios/

Kelly R Ludeking

Guest Speaker Professor Rian Kerrane - FINE 3510 Mold Design & Casting
Tuesday 16 March 2021

Kelly graduated from Minneapolis College of Art & Design (MCAD) in 1997 with a BFA in sculpture and furniture design. Here he was introduced to the feral fires of iron casting and the precision of fine furniture crafting. Ludeking has participated in, facilitated and hosted hundreds of iron pours since. In 2008 he co-founded Ironhead Sculptural Services, LLC, a traveling iron foundry that shares the art and appreciation of cast iron sculpture and performances with local community members.

KRL metals is his personal artist business where he explores intimate creative processes from mould making to molten mayhem to masterpieces. He also teaches welding to garden sculpture aficionados, hosts aluminum medallion pours for family reunions & corporate events and co-creates with visionaries to usher their ideas into the world.

In recent years, as academic access to iron casting has declined, Ludeking has branched out as a consultant in the cast iron world. He guides artists through the process of building their own furnace, running it for the first time & troubleshooting the fluid nature of coke-operated cupolas & cupolettes. Whether speaking on a panel at colleges and conferences or solo engagements at rotary clubs, art centers and high schools, Ludeking is at home sharing his vast knowledge, experience and passion for the creative life. His love for sharing cast iron art & processes lead him to begin an annual event on his family farm in NE Iowa, USA. Since 2004 artists have traveled from all over the world to the Ludeking estate for camping, community and cast iron festivities.

 

krlmetals@gmail.com | www.kellyludeking.com |

Tamsie Ringler

Guest Speaker - Professor Rian Kerrane - FINE 3510 Mold Design & Casting.
Tuesday 9 March 202

Tamsie Ringler is a sculptor and foundry artist. Her practice encompasses durational iron casting events and immersive installation and social practice projects to engage environmental awareness. Many of her projects serve as a platform for supporting the work of other artists, Recent projects include Fenced, performed at the Festival of High Temperatures in Wroclaw, Poland, and the River Lee Project, held at the National Sculpture Factory, Cork, Ireland. Recent exhibitions include Still Life, at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Blanket-piece in the exhibition Confluence, Safehouse 1, London and Cutting in, at the Backspace Gallery, University of Wisconsin-Madison. She has received numerous awards including a 2017 McKnight Fellowship and is a member of the Royal Society of Sculptors. She is the Director of Winter is Alive! a cooler world carnival. (https://tamsie.com/)

I am grateful for the generosity of our home – we live in a sunlit garden in infinite night.

Kim Henkel

Guest Speaker - Professor Rian Kerrane - FINE 3510 Mold Design & Casting
Tuesday 26 January 2021

Currently living in Moab Utah, with a BFA in Sculpture and her BA in Art Education, Kim received an MFA in Sculpture from Arizona State University 2005. Having received numerous grants, scholarships, and residencies, Kim exhibits her sculpture and jewelry across the US. She has instructed sculpture at Northern Arizona University, Western New Mexico University and at UNM Taos. Henkel works seasonally with the BLM as a park ranger in the Lower Gorge of the Rio Grande Del Norte National Monument. She worked for the Department of Interior National Parks as an interpretive park ranger, museum exhibit technician, archaeological preservationist, education outreach coordinator at numerous parks including Badlands National Park, Aztec Ruins National Monument, Grand Canyon and for Mount Rushmore as the sculptor in residence. Her area of expertise is in metal casting and fabrication. Her jewelry and sculpture reflect her work in the arts and outdoors. For Kim, cast metal sculpture objects conserve the moment of discovery. The preciousness of wildness and preserving of the animals’ fate is portrayed in her sculptures which speak to ambiguity, to memorialize and mirror the beauty of ephemeral qualities of death and decay in nature.

In the end, we conserve only what we love. We will love only what we understand. We will understand only what we are taught. ~Baba Dioum, Senegalese poet.

www.khstudiotaos.com
#khstudiotaos