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Curlee Holton, professor of art and director of the Experimental Printmaking Institute (EPI) at Lafayette, was featured April 12 on “Tempo,” Lehigh Valley PBS station WLVT’s weekly news magazine program. The show will be rebroadcast 7:30 p.m. Friday.
Holton is curator of “Faith Ringgold: A View from the Studio,” a retrospective of Ringgold’s paintings, prints, soft sculptures, and story quilts from the 1960s through 2004, on display at the Allentown Art Museum now through Sunday, Aug. 14.
Filmed at both the EPI and the Allentown Art Museum, the “Tempo” piece focuses primarily on Holton’s influence in bringing Ringgold and her work to the Lehigh Valley. Holton has collaborated with Ringgold on 13 prints since 1993, when he coordinated her stay at Lafayette as artist-in-residence.
Holton has been a mentor and collaborator for numerous Lafayette students in creative art projects. Most recently as part of the Community of Scholars program, he oversaw the completion of a mural that three seniors created for installation in Farinon College Center. Using photographic images from the past and present, and original works that envision the future, seniors Maya Freelon (Durham, N.C.), Zoe Gavriilidis (Northvale, N.J.), and Nicole Kozyra (Marlton, N.J.) created a 130-foot montage.
In addition to the mural project, the women are involved in a variety of tasks linked to the EPI, including taking care of prints for other artists and making prints of works created by Ringgold, which will be displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art later this year.
Holton recently had etchings selected for inclusion in the collections of the Library of Congress and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. He has mounted more than 30 one-person shows and participated in more than 75 group exhibitions, including the Seventh International Biennale at the National Center of Fine Arts, Cairo, and shows at Centro de Cultura Casa Lamm Gallery, Mexico City. In 2001, he received a commission to create the awards for the Pennsylvania Governor’s Awards for the Arts. His works are in the collections of universities, foundations, and corporations, including Cleveland Museum of Art, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Allentown Art Museum, Villanova University, and Morehouse College. He was the 1999 recipient of Lafayette’s Carl R. and Ingeborg Beidleman Research Award, recognizing excellence in applied research or scholarship.
The Experimental Printmaking Institute provides an open and creative environment in which professional artists and students create new bodies of work while investigating and experimenting with a wide variety of approaches to the print medium. Its artist-in-residence and visiting artist programs have featured more than 50 residencies, many involving artists with international reputations such as Ringgold, Al Loving, and Sam Gilliam. EPI’s exhibitions and international exchanges have introduced a broad range of artists and contemporary printmaking trends to members of the Lafayette community and beyond.