Anna Ballarian Visiting Artist Series
About Anna Ballarian
Anna Ballarian (1910-2010) was born in Rochester, N.Y. and was an alumna of RIT’s School for American Crafts. She was a lifelong artist and educator, retiring from her position of Professor at San Jose State University in 1977. She left behind a legacy of creativity and a passion for developing communities of artists and educators. The School of Art’s Visiting Artist Program would not be possible without her generous contribution.
Current Visiting Artists
Artists invited by the Anna Ballarian Series visit the RIT campus for a variety of engagements. All visiting artists give a public talk, and typically visit the studios of graduate students in various art and design programs. Artists may also exhibit work in one of the galleries, and in some cases install an outdoor sculpture as part of our rotating display on the north lawn of Booth and Gannett Halls, near the MAGIC building on the RIT Campus. Read more details about each artist's visit below.
Corey Pemberton
As a queer person of mixed race, Corey Pemberton often feels other. Knowing nothing about his African roots and very little about his European heritage, the artist considers lineage and the idea of connectedness in his glass art, paintings, and other works on paper. Pemberton’s vessels, blown glass baskets based on those of his presumed ancestors, are made in a European style that borrows forms and patterns from the sweetgrass weavers of South Africa. He says: “I use color and pattern as vehicles to describe situations where society has used a person’s uniqueness against them; where people have been labeled or categorized based on physical characteristics in an effort to hold them back. Can we, as a society, find a way to unite in our otherness?”
Born in Reston, Virginia and currently residing in Los Angeles, Pemberton splits time between production glassblowing, his painting practice, and Crafting the Future (CTF), an organization he co-founded with furniture artist Annie Evelyn in early 2019. CTF partners with organizations across the country such as Louisiana’s Young Aspirations/Young Artists, known as YAYA; Kentucky’s STEAM Exchange; North Carolina’s Penland School of Craft; and Maine’s Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, with the goal of increasing access to education and opportunity for underrepresented artists in order to help them develop thriving careers. In 2019, CTF raised more than $8,000 to send two young New Orleans students, Tyrik Conaler and Shanti Broom, to Penland School of Craft.
[Talking Out Your Glass: Podcast]
Exhibition: February 7 - March 8, 2025
Bevier Gallery, Booth Hall 2600, RIT Campus
Artist Talk:
Tuesday, February 25
5:00 PM
Bevier Gallery, Booth Hall 2600
RIT Campus
Parking in lots E/F; free after 5:00 PM
Free/All Welcome
Glass Hot Shop Demonstrations:
Thursday, February 26
11:00 am & 2:00 pm
Booth Hall 3730 (Glass Hot Shop)
Free // All Welcome; drop in/come and go
Nadya Tolokonnikova
Born in Norilsk, Siberia, Russia, conceptual performance artist and activist Nadya Tolokonnikova is the creator of Pussy Riot, a global feminist art movement. She was sentenced in 2012 to 2 years' imprisonment following an anti-Putin performance Punk Prayer. Punk Prayer was named by The Guardian among the best art pieces of the 21st century.
Tolokonnikova's Putin’s Ashes art installation at Jeffrey Deitch Gallery in January 2023 propelled her into a new criminal case and put on Russia’s most wanted criminal list. Her debut museum exhibition RAGE, opened at OK Linz, Linz, Austria in June 2024, and the eponymous performance piece performed at the Neue Nationalgalerie on July 4.
Tolokonnikova's work is in the collections of The Brooklyn Museum, Dallas Museum of Art, Museum of Art and Design, American Folk Art Museum, Taschen and Beth Rudin DeWoody, among others.
Exhibition: October 11 - November 23, 2024
William Harris Gallery, Gannett Hall 3030
RIT Campus
Artist Talk: Friday, October 11, 6:30 PM
Wegmans Theater, MAGIC Spell Studios
RIT Campus
Lelia Byron
Lelia Byron is an interdisciplinary artist who makes paintings, murals, sculptures, installations, and public art projects. Some recent work includes a series of murals in Rauma, Finland, using lace-making as a metaphor for language and connection, a public sculpture made from plastic waste in Madison, WI, a series of paintings about women coffee farmers in Colombia, outdoor sculptures in rural Portugal made from recycled plastic, and a series of paintings about workers in Massachusetts fighting for labor rights. Byron earned her BFA from Carnegie Mellon University and an MFA from Chelsea College of Arts (University of the Arts London).
Exhibition: February 22 - March 22, 2024
Bevier Gallery, Booth Hall 2600, RIT Campus
Artist Talk: March 21, 2024, 5:00 PM
Bevier Gallery, Booth Hall 2600, RIT Campus
Outdoor Sculpture: Quilt, painted wood, 2022. Visible on the north lawn of Booth/Gannett Halls, RIT Campus.
"In Quilt (2022), many different parts, each with its own story, come together to form a complex system, much like how we are all intricately connected to each other and to the natural environment. If one part of the quilt is removed, the pattern becomes unbalanced. In this sculpture, each square section or quilt block is unique, varying in depth, pattern, and color, but combined the larger quilt pattern becomes even more unique." - Lelia Byron
Nicholas Galanin
Born in Sitka, Alaska, Nicholas Galanin is a Lingít and Unangax̂ multi-disciplinary artist and musician whose visual work confronts disconnections between native and non-native communities. His work has been shown internationally, including the 2019 Whitney Biennial, Site Santa Fe, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., Art Basel Miami, and many more, along with recent outdoor installations at Desert X and Brooklyn Bridge Park. His work resides in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and more.
I Think It Goes Like This (Gold) is on view at RIT City Art Space October 6, 2023 - February 18, 2024. The work is jointly owned by Art Bridges and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. The exhibition of this work and Galanin's visit to Rochester is generously made possible by Art Bridges, in partnership with Memorial Art Gallery, the RIT College of Art and Design and the RIT Museum Studies Program.
Exhibition: October 6, 2023 - February 18, 2024
RIT City Art Space, 280 E Main Street, Downtown Rochester, NY
Artist Talk: Thursday, October 26, 7:00 PM
Memorial Art Gallery, 500 University Ave, Rochester, NY
Amanda Turner Pohan
Amanda Turner Pohan (known as Pohan) is an interdisciplinary artist based in the Catskills, New York. Pohan is working on a sound sculpture in collaboration with the United States Geological Survey for the RIT College of Art and Design campus in 2023. Pohan’s most recent video work, Alexa Echoes, screened at the 36th edition of Images Festival in Toronto, Canada. Pohan received her MFA from Hunter College and her BFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York.
Exhibition: October 19 - November 18, 2023
William Harris Gallery, Gannett Hall 3030, RIT Campus
Artist Talk: Thursday, October 19, 5:00 PM
William Harris Gallery, Gannett Hall 3030, RIT Campus
Outdoor Sculpture: between Scylla and Charybdis, pole-mounted aluminum enclosure with electronics, solar panels, aluminum QR code signage, audio livestream. Visible on the north lawn of Booth/Gannett Halls, RIT Campus.
between Scylla and Charybdis is a solar-powered audio live stream that broadcasts the real-time translation of water quality data from the Genesee River* into a female choir, interpreting the weather of the river as an ever changing and continuous vocalization. Some vocalizations form words that compose the ancient Greek ritual shout the ololyga, a vocal performance particular to females and practiced in times of extreme pain or ecstasy such as child birth, catastrophe, war.
*the so-called Genesee River is known as Chin-u-shio by the Seneca nation. It is a tributary of so-called Lake Ontario, which is Niigaani-gichigami or Gichi-zaaga’igan in Anishinaabemowin (Ojibwe) and Ontarí'io in Huron.
Anna Hepler
Anna Hepler is a sculptor based in Greenfield, Massachusetts. Her work, which is both hand-held and architectural in scale, overturns first impressions – wire forms flatten into drawings, clay impersonates metal, plywood coils like rope, plastic inhales and exhales. Hepler values embarrassment, uncertainty, blunder, and fragility as active agents in her studio process.
“In preferring a path of unknowns, I choose purpose over craft, awkwardness over expertise, and improvisation over procedure. I am working to loosen knots of assumption and forfeit some of my authority.”
Her work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions worldwide, and resides in the collections of the National Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C.), Tate Gallery (London, England), DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park (Lincoln, MA), the Portland Museum of Art (Portland, ME), and more. Hepler received her MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Exhibition: February 16 - March 24, 2023
Bevier Gallery, Booth Hall 2600, RIT Campus
Artist Talk: Thursday, February 16, 5:00 PM
Bevier Gallery, Booth Hall 2600, RIT Campus, Free
Lauren Kalman
Lauren Kalman is a visual artist based in Detroit, whose practice is rooted in the history of adornment, contemporary craft, sculpture, video, photography and performance. Through her work she investigates constructions of the ideal, the politics of craft, the body, and the built environment through performances using her body.
Her work has been featured in exhibitions at the Renwick Gallery at the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Museum of Contemporary Craft, Museum of Arts and Design, Cranbrook Art Museum, Contemporary Art Museum Houston, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Mint Museum, and the World Art Museum in Beijing, among others. Her work is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, and the Detroit Institute of Art.
Exhibition: October 20 - November 19, 2022
William Harris Gallery, Gannett Hall 3030, RIT Campus
Artist Talk: Thursday, October 20, 5:00 PM
William Harris Gallery, Gannett Hall 3030, RIT Campus
Letha Wilson
Letha Wilson is a contemporary artist known for “breaking the rules” of photography, often transforming her photographs into objects that bend and curve out of walls, becoming three-dimensional sculpture.
Her work has appeared in solo and group exhibitions worldwide, including GRIMM, Amsterdam (NL) and New York, N.Y. (U.S.); the Center for Contemporary Art and Culture, Portland, Ore. (U.S.); the DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, Mass. (U.S.), the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, and Galerie Christophe Gaillard, Paris (FR). Artsy recently named Wilson an emerging artist to watch, and one of twenty female artists who are "pushing sculpture forward."
Outdoor Sculpture: Craters of the Moon Fold Back, UV photographs on weathering steel, 8'h x 2.5'w x 4.5'd. Visible on the north lawn of Booth/Gannett Halls, RIT Campus.
Exhibition: February 10 - March 12, 2022
Bevier Gallery, Booth Hall, RIT Campus, 73 Lomb Memorial Drive, Rochester, NY, 14623.
Artist Talk: Thursday, February 10, 2022, 5:00 PM
Bevier Gallery. Watch a recording of Letha's talk at RIT by clicking here.
Joshua Enck
Joshua Enck's background in architecture and furniture design informs his contemporary abstract sculptures, often made from wood or steel. A Fulbright scholar, Enck’s work has appeared in numerous solo and group exhibitions, and his work continues to join public and private collections across the U.S.
After teaching at Rhode Island School of Design for 10 years, he now lives and works in Rochester, teaching courses in architecture and drawing at the University of Rochester.
Outdoor Sculpture: Ossicone, weathering and painted steel, 22'h x 10'w x 8'd. Visible on the north lawn of the MAGIC Center, RIT Campus.
Exhibition: August 6 - September 25, 2021
RIT City Art Space, 280 East Main Street, Rochester, NY, 14604.
Open Thursday - Sunday 1-5 p.m., Fridays 1-9 p.m. Admission is free.
Artist Talk: Friday, September 3, 2021, 6:00 PM
RIT City Art Space, Free and open to the public.