News
Jen Delos Reyes starts Art and The Radical Lecture Series at GVSU
September 24, 2016
As part of the lecture series "Art and The Radical", the Department of Art and Design receives the visit of Jen Delos Reyes as its opening lecture. The series will feature creative workers whose projects deepen our understanding of the world by revealing alternate histories, highlighting marginalized communities, and challenging widely held beliefs and traditions. Delos Reyes lecture will occur on Monday, October 3rd, 2016, in room 132 Lake Huron Hall, in the Allendale campus.
As a dynamic artist, educator, writer, and radical community arts organizer, we believe that Jen Delos Reyes will provide a powerful model of ambition, creativity, intellectual curiosity and leadership to our largely-female student body.
One aspect of her practice is focused on creating and supporting sustainable, artist-led culture. She is the director and founder of "Open Engagement,” an annual international conference on socially engaged art that explores and supports the work of transdisciplinary artists, activists, students, scholars, community members, and organizations. The conference mission is to expand the dialogue around socially engaged art, as well as the structures and networks of support for artists working within the complex social issues and struggles of our time.
She has recently published "I’m Going to Live the Life I Sing About in My Song: How Artists Make and Live Lives of Meaning", a book exploring the artist impetus toward art and everyday life, and how daily domestic life is integrally connected to politics.
Delos Reyes worked at Portland State University from 2008-2014 to create the first flexible residency Art and Social Practice MFA program in the United States and devised the curriculum that focused on place, engagement, and dialogue. She currently lives and works in Chicago, where she is the Associate Director of the School of Art and Art History at the University of Illinois Chicago.
For more information on Jen Delos Reyes, please visit https://www.jendelosreyes.com.
The next lecture in the Art and The Radical Series will be given by Nicolas Lampert. Lampert is a Milwaukee-based interdisciplinary artist and author whose work focuses on themes of social justice and ecology. His lecture will occur on November 7th. Mark your calendars!