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Sculptor Melvin Edwards will meet with art faculty and students, work in the Experimental Printmaking Institute, and give a public lecture during a campus residency from Tuesday through Thursday.
His visit is sponsored by the David L. Sr. and Helen J. Temple Visiting Lecture Series Fund, established by Riley K. Temple ’71, which supports the work of artists, curators, and art historians. It is coordinated by the Experimental Printmaking Institute, directed by Curlee Holton, professor of art.
Edwards will discuss his work, including recent projects and the influence on African aesthetics, 3:30 p.m. Wednesday in the Oechsle Hall auditorium. A public reception for the artist will follow.
Edwards is a three-time recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts award for sculpture and was twice awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to travel to Zimbabwe. He has exhibited widely in the United States and abroad. His work is in private collections as well as in the collections of numerous museums, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, and the National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Born in 1937 in Houston, Edwards studied at the Los Angeles County Institute, Los Angeles City College, and received his BFA from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. In 1972 he joined the faculty of Livingston College of Rutgers University and in 1980 became professor at the Mason Gross School of Creative and Performing Arts, also at Rutgers University.
Edwards is perhaps best known for his Lynch Fragments constructed from tools, chains, nails, barbed wire, and other bits of hardware. His work reflects a successive layering of references from his travels to Ghana, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Mexico, Cuba, and more recently, Japan.
“It is possible to experience the totality of the universe within one’s own neighborhood,” he says, “and it would be possible to recognize the meaning of the voice although it speaks another language.”
For more information, call the Experimental Printmaking Institute at x5592.