Date/Time
Date(s) - September 3, 2021
5:30 pm - 6:30 pm
Location
Organ Recital Hall, University Center for the Arts
Dionne Lee will be joined by poet, author, and CSU professor Camille Dungy and photographer Odette England in conversation on Friday, September 3 at 5:30 p.m. in the Organ Recital Hall at the University Center for the Arts.
Dungy will give a brief poetry reading before the event begins, and a public reception will be hosted in the museum following the conversation.
The program is held in conjunction with the exhibition Dionne Lee: A Muscle Memory and presented in partnership with the Center for Fine Art Photography.
Digital streaming is available through the C4FAP: https://c4fap.org/events-blog/dungy-england-lee
Dionne Lee holds an MFA from the California College of the Arts and considers the complications of, and dual legacies in, photographic landscapes in her work. She looks to historical narratives to identify American soil as a site of trauma and questions how history determines the autonomy and endurance of people across time. Lee’s work also features research and physical action—including the repeated appearance of hands—to locate the body in the scenic vista. Most of the art in A Muscle Memory pre-dates the pandemic, yet Lee confronts the now ubiquitous repercussions of global uncertainty, climate change, and natural disasters. She asks the crucial question: who is best positioned to survive in these chaotic, ever-changing spaces?
In Dionne Lee: A Muscle Memory, Lee collages and juxtaposes found images from survival manuals with silver gelatin prints of her own photographs. The analog process of this printing medium, which the artist also employs in repurposing her found images, mirrors the instinctual and tactile nature of endurance skills in the landscape. By researching traditional wilderness survival, Lee investigates how trauma and history inform everyday life, one’s ability to persevere, and the tenacity in working alongside the land.
Camille Dungy is an award-winning poet, author, and professor in the Department of English at Colorado State University. She is the author of four poetry collections, including the recent Trophic Cascade (Wesleyan UP, 2017), winner of the Colorado Book Award. she also recently debuted a book of personal essays titled Guidebook to Relative Strangers (W. W. Norton, 2017), which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Dungy has also edited and co-edited various collections of poetry while her own work has appeared in over 30 anthologies and dozens of print and online venues.
Dungy has been a finalist, awardee, and honoree of a number of book and legacy awards over the course of her career, including two Northern California Book Awards, a California Book Award silver medal, two NAACP Image Award nominations, two Hurston/Wright Legacy Award nominations, fellowships from the Sustainable Arts Foundation, and fellowships from the NEA in both poetry and prose. She was recently awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2019.
Odette England is an Australian-British photographer who lives and works in New York City and Providence, Rhode Island. She has exhibited in more than 100 museums, galleries, and art spaces worldwide and received honors in various artist-in-residence fellowships, most recently as a Fellow at Amherst College from 2020-2021. England has also published her work in three photobooks, including the critically-acclaimed edited volume Keeper of the Hearth (Schilt Publishing, 2020) and the recent Dairy Character (Saint Lucy Books, 2021), and her photographs have appeared in various international print publications,.
England holds an MA in Communication Culture and Language from the University of South Australia, an MFA in Photography with Honors from the Rhode Island School of Design, and a scholarship to complete her PhD at the Australian National University. She has taught photography at Brown University and Rhode Island School of Design, and now guest lectures at the Center for Fine Art Photography in Fort Collins, Colorado.
England’s work will be featured in Degrees by Odette England at the Hatton Gallery in the Visual Arts Building. The exhibition is presented by the CSU Art and Art History Department and the Center for Fine Art Photography.
Support for this program has been generously provided City of Fort Collins Fort Fund, by the FUNd Endowment at CSU, and with support from Colorado Creative Industries. CCI and its activities are made possible through an annual appropriation from the Colorado General Assembly and federal funds from the National Endowment for the Arts.
This project was also made possible in part through a grant from the Lilla B. Morgan Memorial Endowment, which works to enhance the cultural development and atmosphere for the arts at Colorado State University. This fund benefits from the generous support of all those who love the arts.