Clifford Ross with Dr. Lucy Bowditch

Artist and photographer Clifford Ross will discuss their work and creative life in the context of our new social reality with art historian, Dr. Lucy Bowditch. We will conclude the event with a poetry reading from Steven Alvarez.

Clifford Ross began his career as a painter and sculptor, and in 1994 became deeply involved with photography and other media. His singular goal has been to create work that relates to the sublime in nature. Using both realistic and abstract means to achieve his goals, he often develops radically new approaches to existing media. He began his well-known Hurricane Wave series in 1996, entering the surf during extreme weather, often up to his neck, while tethered to an assistant on land. His photographic techniques expanded over time, using digital methods, inkjet printing, and ultimately developing his unique method of printing on wood. Ross’ works have been exhibited in museums around the world, and are in many collections including the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Parrish Art Museum, the J. Paul Getty Museum, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

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Dr. Lucy Bowditch received her doctorate in Art History from the University of Chicago in 1994, and has been teaching full time at The College of Saint Rose in Albany, New York, since 1995. She regularly teaches Modern Art, Contemporary Art, and History of Photography.

Her interest in notions of public and private is longstanding. In addition to delivering an initial conference paper “Public and Private in Light of Lingerie,” and consequently publishing an essay on the topic, she taught a course titled “Constructions of Public and Private Space” at the New School and chaired a College Art Association session with the same title. She regularly delivers conference papers on the topic. Dr. Bowditch is currently working on “Courbet in Context: Modernity, Morality, and Lingerie.”

Steven Alvarez is the author of The Codex Mojaodicus, winner of the Fence Modern Poets Prize. He has also authored the novels in verse The Pocho Codex and The Xicano Genome, both published by Editorial Paroxismo, and the chapbooks, Tonalamatl, El Segundo’s Dream Notes (Letter [r] Press), Un/documented, Kentucky (winner of the Rusty Toque Chapbook Prize), and Six Poems from the Codex Mojaodicus (winner of the Seven Kitchens Press Rane Arroyo Poetry Prize). His work has appeared in the Best Experimental Writing, Anomaly, Asymptote, Berkeley Poetry Review, Fence, MAKE, The Offing, and Waxwing. Follow Steven on Instagram @stevenpaulalvarez and Twitter @chastitellez.

The New Social Environment — Daily conversations with artists, writers, filmmakers, poets around the world where we discuss creative life in the context of our new social reality.