Artists Now! Guest Lecture Series

Artists Now! is a popular guest lecture series designed for a broad audience with an interest in contemporary visual art. It presents a diverse group of artists working across traditional, hybrid and emergent disciplines. Join these nationally and internationally recognized practitioners as they explore and expand the boundaries of creative visual practices.

The Artists Now! lecture series is supported in part by the UWM Black & Gold Committee and Differential Tuition funds, Frederick R. Layton Fund, the John Colt Memorial Art Fund, The Queer Curatorial Fund, Center for 21st Century Studies, Greater Milwaukee Foundation’s Mary L. Nohl Fund Fellowships for Individual Artists Program, Print Club, Focus, and OBJECT.

2023-24 Artist Lineup


September 6, 2023, 7:30 pm

Artists Now! Guest Lecture Series: Dakota Mace

As a Diné (Navajo) interdisciplinary artist and scholar, Mace focuses on translating the language of Diné history and beliefs. Through alternative photography techniques, weaving, beadwork, and papermaking, her work draws from her heritage to explore family lineage, community, and identity.


September 13, 2023, 7:30 pm

Artists Now! Guest Lecture Series: Alayna N. Pernell

An award-winning visual artist, writer, and educator from Heflin, Alabama, Alayna N. Pernell (2023 Mary L. Nohl Emerging Artist Fellow) examines the harsh realities and complexities experienced by Black American women and creates space for productive dialogue by enacting an ethic of care, respect, and grace.


Yazzie_7 Crow 2014 30 x 42 monotype_Elizabeth Rex

September 20, 2023, 7:30 pm

Artists Now! Guest Lecture Series: Melanie Yazzie

As a printmaker, painter, and sculptor, Yazzie’s work draws upon her rich Diné (Navajo) cultural heritage. She works to serve as an agent of change by encouraging others to learn about social, cultural, and political phenomena shaping the contemporary lives of Native peoples in the United States and beyond.


October 4, 2023, 7:30 pm

Artists Now! Guest Lecture Series: Anna Natter

Natter is a Hungarian designer currently living in Germany. After studying fine art and animation, she worked for the largest commercial television company in Hungary before transitioning to freelance work. Natter currently works as head of design at Meetingbox and is active in the NFT community. 


Brian Wagner

October 11, 2023, 7:30 pm

Artists Now! Guest Lecture Series: Brian Wagner

Primarily a lithographer and book artist, Wagner’s work often focuses on the queer existence and memory, as well as their interest in queer domesticity and what it’s like living in and occupying these spaces. Wagner is a trained Tamarind Collaborative Printer and Lithographer.


October 18, 2023, 7:30 pm

Artists Now! Guest Lecture Series: Regina Harsanyi

As MoMI's Associate Curator of Media Arts, she empowers artists working with technology as a key aspect of their practice, whether it's through facilitating exhibition in alternative spaces or thinking through the preventive conservation needed to enable future engagement.


Rachel Hayes 2022 White Sands National Park NM

October 25, 2023, 7:30 pm

Artists Now! Guest Lecture Series: Rachel Hayes

Weaving color and form into both built and natural environments, Hayes creates intricate fiber-art installations that cover sand dunes, cross rivers, and billow over mountains, as well as galleries. Exhibited globally, her work is inspired by abstraction, fashion design, and the natural landscape.


Trellis and fading flowers 2022, Oil on canvas, 20x20

November 1, 2023, 7:30 pm

Artists Now! Guest Lecture Series: Rafael Francisco Salas

A Wisconsin-based artist and educator, Salas blends landscape, portraiture, architecture, and country music into artwork evoking a strange, rural poetry. He holds board positions with the Wisconsin Arts Board, Museum of Wisconsin Art, and the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters.


November 8, 2023, 7:30 pm

Artists Now! Guest Lecture Series: Allison Grant

An artist, writer, curator, and educator, Grant’s artworks have been exhibited nationally and internationally and are held in collections across the country. She has won numerous awards and grants, including being named on the Silver Eye Center for Photography’s 2022 Silver List.


November 15, 2023, 7:30 pm

Artists Now! Guest Lecture Series: Fatima Laster

A self-taught interdisciplinary visual artist, curator and gallery owner-operator, Fatima Laster (2023 Mary L. Nohl Emerging Artist Fellow) broaches social-political subject matter from a Black American vantage point. Her goal is to produce resistance art imbued with humor or irony to disarmingly reveal rejected or overlooked perspectives and people.


November 29, 2023, 7:30 pm

Artists Now! Guest Lecture Series: Annika Pettersson

As a Swedish jeweler with intimate material knowledge, Pettersson identifies and isolates preciousness. This is done not with the tense precision of a goldsmith, but rather with the gut reaction of a laborer. Her contemporary explorations embody the sublime and transcendent nature of jewelry.


December 6, 2023, 7:30 pm

Artists Now! Guest Lecture Series: Mary Tremonte

An artist, educator, and DJ based in Pittsburgh, Tremonte is a member of Justseeds Artists' Cooperative. She works with "printmaking in the expanded field," including printstallation, interactive silkscreen printing in public space, and wearable artist multiples such as queer scout badges.


January 31, 7:30 pm

Artists Now! Guest Lecture Series: Oliver Ressler

An Austrian-based artist and filmmaker, Ressler produces installations, public projects, and films on economics, democracy, migration, the climate crisis, forms of resistance and social alternatives. He has exhibited internationally and has completed forty-one films that are screened widely.


February 7, 7:30 pm

Artists Now! Guest Lecture Series: Mo Zell

An award-winning architect, educator and author, Zell’s transformative programs connect art, architecture, and community engagement. With notable research, she fosters design thinking and creativity in both architectural practice and education. She holds degrees from University of Virginia and Yale.


February 14, 7:30 pm

Artists Now! Guest Lecture Series: Julie Chen

An internationally known book artist who has been publishing limited edition artists’ books under the Flying Fish Press imprint for over 20 years, Chen’s work is known for combining three-dimensional and movable book structures with fine letterpress printing and inspired artistic vision.


February 21, 7:30 pm

Artists Now! Guest Lecture Series: kathryn e. martin

Interested in the potential of the everyday, martin draws from formal characteristics to make instinctive, calculated decisions that dissect, interpret, repeat and re-assemble inspiration into new landscapes and interactions intended to connect with place and audience.


February 28, 7:30 pm

Artists Now! Guest Lecture Series: Victoria Roth

A contemporary New York-based artist, Roth has exhibited paintings and drawings at key galleries and museums, such as Kate Werble Gallery. Her work has been featured in articles for HYPEBEAST and WHITEWALL, as well as the Selected Gallery Guide NYC published by Two Coats of Paint.


March 6, 7:30 pm

Artists Now! Guest Lecture Series: Rhea Myers

An artist, hacker and writer who places technology and culture in mutual interrogation to produce new ways to see the world. Collaborating with blockchain pioneers, Myers has been making blockchain art, writing blockchain art theory, and composing blockchain stories.


March 13, 7:30 pm

Artists Now! Guest Lecture Series: Virgil Ortiz

Ortiz moves into a new era combining art, décor, fashion, video, and film. One of the most innovative potters of his time, Ortiz’s exquisite works have been exhibited in museum collections around the world including the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian.


March 27, 7:30 pm

Artists Now! Guest Lecture Series: Evelyn Patricia Terry

A widely collected and exhibited professional artist, Terry’s figurative and non-objective artwork includes paintings, assemblages, book art, installations, and public art. She has exhibited internationally, authored art articles and won commissions, fellowships, and exhibition awards.


April 3, 7:30 pm

Artists Now! Guest Lecture Series: Emily Wiethorn

A Cincinnati artist and educator, Wiethorn’s work is rooted in familial experiences and how those relationships reflect our identities. They have attended the New York Times Portfolio Review, presented at the Society for Photographic Education Conferences, and had their work published online by Vogue Italia.


April 10, 7:30 pm

Artists Now! Guest Lecture Series: Melis Agabigum & Josh Kosker

Agabigum’s work in jewelry/metals and sculptural textiles examines how emotional weight affects perceived connection to others, bodies, and space. Kosker is a contemporary jeweler and visual artist who explores impermanence and counterintuitive methodologies, while examining craft and materiality.


April 17, 7:30 pm

Artists Now! Guest Lecture Series: AYDO (A young Yu & Nicholas Oh)

AYDO is a collaborative duo based in New York. They have both exhibited extensively throughout the world, including the Museum of Art and Design, Christie’s Inc, Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, LeRoy Neiman Gallery, Time Square Space, the Jewish Museum, and the Smithsonian.


April 24, 7:30 pm

Artists Now! Guest Lecture Series: MFA Candidates Eric Skadson & Andrew McConville

McConville is an artist, designer, and programmer who applies design thinking methodologies to build digital and physical experiences. Skadson is a Navy veteran and educator-turned-artist who uncovered his ancestral Punjabi roots during a backpacking adventure through Nepal and India.


May 1, 7:30 pm

Artists Now! Guest Lecture Series: Erica A. Meier

As a resident designer and frame builder at Waterford Precision Cycles, Meier created internationally renowned and award-winning bicycle frames. A Wisconsin-based artist and educator, she has taught jewelry and metalsmithing at many universities and exhibits her work nationally and internationally.

Artists Now! Archive

Since its inception the Artists Now! series has hosted hundreds of renowned and aspiring artists including Nick Cave, Elinor Carucci, Souther Salazar, Seitu Jones, Betsy Damon, Sandra de la Loza and Jon Rappleye to name a few. We’ve archived each of these inspiring sessions for you to enjoy.