Artists Now! Guest Lecture Series

September 10, 7:30 pm

Artists Now! Guest Lecture Series: Michelle Angela Ortiz

Michelle Angela Ortiz is a Philadelphia-based artist, muralist, community arts educator, and filmmaker who uses art to uplift overlooked communities. For 25 years, she’s created 50+ large-scale public works globally and won the 2016 Public Art Year in Review Award from Americans for the Arts.

September 17, 7:30 pm

Artists Now! Guest Lecture Series: Kelly and Kyle Phelps

Identical twin brothers Kelly and Kyle Phelps are Ohio-based professors and artists who lead sculpture and ceramics programs at Xavier and University of Dayton. Their collaborative ceramic work focuses on blue-collar life, race, and everyday struggles, created from their shared studio in Centerville, OH.

September 24, 7:30 pm

Artists Now! Guest Lecture Series: Seth Gould

Seth Gould is a Massachusetts-based metalsmith who creates utilitarian objects that range from simple tools to highly embellished locks. He has been a Core Fellow and a Resident Artist at the Penland School of Craft and has taught, demonstrated, and lectured at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, the Center for Metal Arts, Southern Illinois Metalsmithing Society, and the Society of North American Goldsmiths.

October 1, 7:30 pm

Artists Now! Guest Lecture Series: Phoenix S. Brown

Phoenix S. Brown is a Milwaukee-based interdisciplinary artist and musician. Originally from Cincinnati, she earned her BFA from MIAD with a minor in art history. Her work has been featured in solo shows at Hawthorn Contemporary, Wright Museum of Art, and Trout Museum of Art.

October 8, 7:30 pm

Artists Now! Guest Lecture Series: Jeff Zimpel

Interdisciplinary artist, curator, and educator Jeff Zimpel composes site-specific installations, inviting creative participation from those who encounter his Living Studio. Zimpel taught art and design at the secondary level and now engages college students throughout the midwest. Currently, he works with Arts @ Large as Artist in Residence Curator, and just completed his second book, Feed the Muse (September 2025).

October 15, 7:30 pm

Artists Now! Guest Lecture Series: Geo Rutherford

Geo Rutherford is a Wisconsin-based artist known for her work on the Great Lakes. Her “Spooky Lakes” TikTok series, launched in 2020, gained viral popularity. With over 1.8 million followers, she’s praised by educators and parents for inspiring kids to explore science, history, and the environment.

October 22, 7:30 pm

Artists Now! Guest Lecture Series: Sarah Ballard

Sarah Ballard is a filmmaker and educator who’s practice fuses personal narratives with historical research to address broader structural inequalities based on gender and class. Ballard teaches at UWM and is a recipient of the 2025 Mary L. Nohl Fund Fellowships for Individual Artists.

October 29, 7:30 pm

Artists Now! Guest Lecture Series: Ceci Tejada

Ceci Tejeda’s family roots are from Michoacán, Mexico, which is why she has Purepecha blood in her veins. Ever since she was a young girl, she’s admired her culture. She creates Alebrijes made of “cartoneria,” a unique and traditional papier mache technique from Mexico City. Tejeda also creates large-sized pieces that support various social justice movements and activism using the same method.

November 5, 7:30 pm

Artists Now! Guest Lecture Series: Dan Grzeca

Dan Grzeca is a Chicago-based artist and printmaker known for thousands of illustrations, hand-silkscreened prints and posters for bands like The Black Keys, Iron and Wine, Built to Spill, Ween and The Decemberists. His studio and shop is called Ground Up Press.

November 12, 7:30 pm

Artists Now! Guest Lecture Series: Michelle Grabner

Michelle Grabner is an artist, writer, and curator, and Crown Family Professor of Art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work is in major museum collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago and Walker Art Center. She co-runs The Suburban (Milwaukee) and The Poor Farm (Little Wolf, WI), and is a 2025 Mary L. Nohl Fellow.

November 19, 7:30 pm

Artists Now! Guest Lecture Series: Xuan Ye

Xuan Ye blends art, music, and technology through improvisation and computation to create software, installations, and performances that explore dissonance and meaning. Their work has appeared at MOCA Toronto, Venice Architecture Biennale, UCCA Shanghai, MUTEK Montreal, and more.

December 3, 7:30 pm

Artists Now! Guest Lecture Series: Wes Larsen

Wes Larsen is an assistant professor of design at UWM. His work spans graphic art, performance, writing and publishing, focusing on obfuscation and irreverence to explore meaning. He uses diverse print and media methods and previously ran the indie design studio Tocco in Fort Worth, Texas.

February 4, 2026, 7:30 pm

Artists Now! Guest Lecture Series: Linda Fleming

Linda Fleming, born 1945 in Pittsburgh, is a renowned sculptor and educator. Location is vital to her work which comes from three studios: a geodesic dome at Libre artist community in Colorado, Wall Spring in Nevada’s Smoke Creek Desert, and The Brewery in Benicia, CA, where she creates most of her large-scale sculptures.

February 11, 2026, 7:30 pm

Artists Now! Guest Lecture Series: Paul Mpagi Sepuya

Paul Mpagi Sepuya’s photography explores the studio as a performative space, focusing on intimate, creative exchanges. His work has been shown at the Studio Museum Harlem, MoMA, and MCA Chicago. He won the 2017 Rema Hort Mann Emerging Artist Grant and lives in Los Angeles.

February 18, 2026, 7:30 pm

Artists Now! Guest Lecture Series: Camila Rosa

Camila Rosa (b. 1988) is a Brooklyn-based Brazilian illustrator and artist known for vibrant art exploring feminism, social justice, and Latin women’s representation. Using bright colors and strong narratives, she challenges stereotypes and promotes inclusivity and equality.

February 25, 2026, 7:30 pm

Artists Now! Guest Lecture Series: J Taran Diamond

J Taran Diamond is a Baltimore-based metalsmith and educator. She has completed residencies at Arrowmont and Baltimore Jewelry Center, where she’s a Teaching Fellow. Outside of the studio, Diamond is an advocate for Black people in the fields of craft and academia and works to help achieve equity and accessibility within those fields.

March 4, 2026, 7:30 pm

Artists Now! Guest Lecture Series: Conhg Lopez & Enrique Gijon

Oaxaca-based printmakers Conhg Lopez and Enrique Gijon exhibit nationally and internationally. Gijon directs Taller de Artes Plásticas Rufino Tamayo, while Lopez works from a studio at Milwaukee’s House of RAD.

March 11, 2026, 7:30 pm

Artists Now! Guest Lecture Series: Todd McDonald

South Carolina-based painter Todd McDonald has exhibited widely, including in Denmark’s Velux International Painting Exhibition, Redux Contemporary, and the Gardiner Art Gallery. He is Associate Professor and Head of Painting at Clemson University.

March 18, 2026, 7:30 pm

Artists Now! Guest Lecture Series: Rory King

Rory King is a Brooklyn-based multidisciplinary designer, creative director, writer, and educator. He’s collaborated with artists, architects, curators, designers, musicians and brands like Sony Music, Vox Media, and 2×4, and taught design at Pratt Institute and Wayne State University.

April 1, 2026, 7:30 pm

Artists Now! Guest Lecture Series: Steve Teeple

Steve Teeple (aka Teeps) is a Los Angeles-based digital artist specializing in 3D character development and printing, digital sculpting and art, visual development, and illustration. He’s worked across games, fashion, music, TV, and film, collaborating with artists like The Weekend and Billie Eilish. He graduated from UWM in Interdisciplinary Arts & Technology.

April 8, 2026, 7:30 pm

Artists Now! Guest Lecture Series: Monika Plioplyte

Monika Plioplyte is a Chicago-based artist born in Lithuania. Her work draws on Baltic folklore, female archetypes, personal rituals, and the uncanny. She collages paper, photographs, and other materials into narrative structures that explore the past, the transmission of information, gender, and states of "in-betweenness" as they relate to her immigrant experience.

April 15, 2026, 7:30 pm

Artists Now! Guest Lecture Series: Kill Joy

Born in West Texas, Kill Joy explores global mythology and ancient symbols through printmaking, murals, bookmaking, and puppetry. Based in Houston, she has created community murals worldwide.

April 22, 2026, 7:30 pm

Artists Now! Guest Lecture Series: Tomiko Jones

Tomiko Jones is an Associate Professor at UW-Madison whose photography and multidisciplinary installations explore social, cultural, and geopolitical transitions – considering the twin crises of too much and too little amid climate change. Narratives unfold in sculptural video installations and fictional photographs.

April 29, 2026, 7:30 pm

Artists Now! Guest Lecture Series: Cynthia Brinich-Langlois

Cynthia Brinich-Langlois explores altered topographies, cartographic systems of ordering space, and metaphorical interpretations of ecological systems through prints, books, and video. She’s exhibited widely and held residencies at Elsewhere and Ucross. She teaches Printmaking & Book Arts at UWM.

May 6, 2026, 7:30 pm

Artists Now! Guest Lecture Series: MFA Candidates Corrigan Eckert & Jack Lehtinen

MFA candidates Corrigan Eckert and Jack Lehtinen explore philosophical questions facing the human race and their connection to the world around them. Eckert focuses on place-based art’s role in community and land stewardship, while Lehtinen critiques AI by contrasting machine-made works with hands-on print and papermaking.