CORVALLIS, Ore. - Ben Buswell, an award-winning sculptor and multimedia artist, will speak and exhibit work at Oregon State University as part of the School of Arts & Communication's Visiting Artists and Scholars Lecture Series.

Buswell will exhibit embellished photographs, mixed media drawings, sculpture and acrylic on canvas in the Fairbanks Gallery on the OSU campus in Corvallis May 2 through May 25.

On Wednesday, May 4, he will give a talk in Fairbanks Gallery at 5 p.m. A reception will be held prior to the talk at 4:30 p.m. The event is free and open to the public. Buswell also will speak in art classes and critique student work that day.

Buswell, a native of Dallas, Oregon, received a bachelor of fine arts from OSU in 2001. He went on to study at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where he earned a master's degree in 2004 and a master's in fine art in 2005.

His work is temporal in nature, spanning a variety of media, from ceramics to incised photographs, using processes such as doubling and repetitive mark-making.

"I am always touching the world in an effort to build an intuitive sense of how materials communicate through their presence," Buswell said in an artist's statement about his work.

"I have a firm belief that we exist only through our bodies, that we are wholly physical things. So material and sculptural presence, as surrogates for this idea, are embedded in the way I think about content. My work is the interaction of the spaces between things: more specifically the space between us. I am looking for the space right before the story is told, the place where we agree to listen."

Buswell has received a Hallie Ford Fellowship in the Visual Arts, supported by the Ford Family Foundation. His work appears in numerous public and private collections and has also been supported by grants from the Regional Arts and Culture Council and the Oregon Arts Commission. He lives and works in Portland and is represented by Upfor Gallery.

The Fairbanks Gallery, 220 S.W. 26th St., Corvallis, is open 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. The exhibit is free and open to the public.

The School of Arts & Communication's Visiting Artists and Scholars Lecture series brings world-renowned artists and scholars to campus to interact with students so they can learn what is required of a professional artist or scholar.

Source: 

Michael Boonstra, 541.737.5017, [email protected] 

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