Artist/teacher to speak on "Art as Activism" Apr. 7

HANCOCK -- Professional artist and teacher Helen R. Klebesadel will discuss the place in which art and activism come together at a free community lecture from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Tuesday, Apr. 7, at the Finlandia University Finnish American Heritage Center, Hancock. Refreshments will be served at 6:30 p.m., preceding the lecture.

The title of her talk is, "The Personal Is Political: Art as Activism."

Klebesadel is working this week as an artist-in-residence with Finlandia art and design students.

Klebesadel is director of the Women’s Studies Consortium at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. In 2006 she was appointed by Governor Jim Doyle to a three-year term on the Wisconsin Arts Board.

Best known for her feminist subject matter, Klebesadal’s current work is centered around environmental themes and the relationship of humans to nature. She also teaches art workshops that focus on empowering participants to create art from their own life experiences.

Klebesadel notes that the arts are one of the ways a culture defines what they value. Visual artists, for example, not only relay aesthetic, and sometimes personal, content in their work, but also may use the content of their own lives to express their understanding of cultural, social, and political issues.

Klebesadel exhibits widely and has written several publications on using student-centered pedagogies in college-level art teaching. In her teaching, she says, she is committed to student-centered, multicultural pedagogies.

An exhibit of watercolor paintings by Klebesadel was featured this March at the Vertin Gallery, Calumet. See Keweenaw Now's slide show of the exhibit on this page.

For additional information, please contact Yueh-mei Cheng, associate professor of studio arts and illustration, at 906-487-7375 or yueh-mei.cheng@finlandia.edu.