Visiting Artist Speaker Series
The Department of Art + Design at Austin Peay State University, in partnership with the Center of Excellence for the Creative Arts, proudly presents our distinguished Visiting Artist Speaker Series. This program brings leading artists, designers, curators, and creative thinkers to enrich our campus and the Clarksville community.
Key Features:
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All events are free and open to the public
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Features nationally and internationally acclaimed artists
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Includes lectures, exhibitions, and interactive sessions
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Hosted in various campus venues
Stay informed about upcoming events by joining the CECA Mailing List.
Upcoming Speakers
All lectures are held in Trahern Room 224 at 6 p.m., unless indicated otherwise.
Cesar Rivera
ADD: AI’s Deficit Disorder Emerging Technologies from Gutenberg to GenAI
Thursday, September 9, 2026 (Lecture), 6 p.m.
Wednesday, September 10, 2026 (Workshop), TBD
This talk will cover historical disruptive technologies throughout design history ending with genAI and LLMs, and data informed predictions on the future of design work and work environments. A Q&A will follow the talk for attendees to ask about related topics.
About the Speaker
Cesar Rivera, a San Antonio native and award-winning communication designer whose work has earned more than 50 honors from leading organizations, including Graphis, AIGA, and AdFed. A U.S. Army veteran, Rivera holds associate degrees from San Antonio College and both bachelor's and master's degrees in communication design from Texas State University. He currently serves as chief design officer at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where he leads the CDC Visual Design Branch in delivering expertise across visual communication, data visualization, and campaign design, and sits on the American Institute of Graphic Arts National Board of Directors. Prior to this role, Rivera built a diverse career working with major brands, running his own design studio, co-founding the AIGA San Antonio chapter, and teaching at the higher education level.
Tim Johnson
Your left brain is a nag
Wednesday, October 7, 2027 (Zoom)
4 p.m., Art+Design Room 120
Living a creative life is the most rewarding path a person can follow in life and in a career. Using examples from my 45-year career in animation, I’ll share some tips about unlocking your voice and liberating your creative right brain from that killjoy left brain.
About the Speaker
Tim Johnson is an American animator, film director, film producer, and television director. Johnson is best known for directing the DreamWorks animated films Antz, Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas, Over the Hedge, and Home.
Sharif Bey
Awakening in Contemporary Craft
Thursday, October 15, 2026
In Awakening in Contemporary Craft, the lecture explores how contemporary craft can serve as a catalyst for personal
expression, cultural connection, and material storytelling. The lecture examines the
evolving role of ceramics as a medium that bridges tradition and
experimentation while inviting new ways of seeing, making, and engaging with the world.
About the Speaker
Sharif Bey is an African American artist, ceramicist, and professor. He produces functional pottery as well as ceramic and mixed-media sculptures using various forms and textures. His body of work reflects his interest in the visual heritage of Africa and Oceania and contemporary African American culture.
To Be Determined
Artist in Residence
Wednesday, October 21
More info coming soon...
David Stout
At Home in the Uncanny Valley – the play and promise of a latent space
Wednesday, October 28, 2027
From his early studies in drawing, painting and performance to his evolution as a video and sound artist David discusses the symbiotic relationships between sound, image, collaborative methods, and the human potentials enabled by emergent technologies. This media rich presentation will include examples taken from his installations, performances and recent award-winning films.
About the Speaker
David Stout (MFA CalArts) is a visual and sonic artist, filmmaker, writer and performance director. He is cofounder of the seminal audio-visual duo, NoiseFold, whose immersive performances and installations have toured worldwide. Drawing together the arts, technology, science and tenets of global wisdom traditions, Stout embraces the accelerating emergence of hybrid arts disciplines and expanded cinematic forms to explore diverse themes from the sonification of moving images and bio-inspired simulations of complex systems to the mythopoetic drama inherent in an unfolding post-industrial era and its dynamic relationship to an evolution of consciousness. These conceptual threads find expression in his current engagement with large scale public projection works, virtual reality, algorithmic animation, generative AI narratives and live-cinema performances that combine digital methods with art making traditions of the past. These works include generative design of novel sculptural vessels realized in blown glass, the emulation of woven fabrics using real-time video processes and performances wedding diverse musical traditions with synthetic media and responsive visual technologies. David is a professor of music composition and an affiliate faculty of studio art at the University of North Texas, where he is interim Director of the Center for Experimental Music and Intermedia (CEMI) and coordinator of (iARTA) – the Initiative for Advanced Research in Technology and the Arts.
Johanna Winters
Staging Desire: Fallible Bodies in Puppetry and Performance
Wednesday, February 24, 2027
In her lecture, Johanna Winters will discuss her interdisciplinary practice as an artist and educator, engaging in diverse practices such as puppetry, sculpture, video, and performance to explore gendered expressions of disappointment and pleasure while inviting critical dialogue about the human desire to be seen and regarded. She will share how her creative practice brings together time-based media, sculpture, and material investigations, offering insight into the ideas and processes that shape her work.
About the Speaker
Johanna is a visual artist and puppeteer whose work explores themes of longing, tenderness, and sensuality in the aging body. She is a 2025 MacDowell Fellow and has been awarded residencies at the Institute for Electronic Arts at Alfred University; the Women’s Studio Workshop (Malmö, Sweden); Yaddo; the Elizabeth Murray Artist Residency; Lawrence Arts Center; ACRE; Vermont Studio Center; Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts; Guttenberg Arts; and the Eugeniusz Geppert Academy of Fine Arts (Wrocław, Poland).
Lucy McRae
Future Sensitive
Thursday, September 15th
6 p.m., Art+Design Room 120
Artist Lucy McRae leads a multi-disciplinary art-research studio investigating the impact future technologies have on human evolution. Through designing hypothetical worlds that use speculation as a tool, Lucy explores new and interdisciplinary avenues for design, provoking impossible questions, and pioneering ways in which artists can spark real-world discourse through a process called narrative prototyping.
About the Speaker
Lucy McRae leads an art-led speculative lab for the future of humanity – A constellation practice and network of scientists, artists, and designers prototyping body futurism and post-nature futures, through worldbuilding and introspection. Her artisanal approach to technology brings science to street level— creating imaginary worlds, in sculpture, film and conceptual fashion, exploring who we are, and where we are headed.
In parallel to her gallery and museum-focused art practice Lucy thrives as a strategic and versatile thought partner to brands, Institutes, and Hollywood Writers' rooms, including Blade Runner 2099. Renowned for her agility and exceptional capacity to connect far-reaching dots, Lucy brings a multiplayer mindset to thought experiments and design led innovation, drawing from her experience leading the far-future research division at Dutch multinational Philips (2006-10) developing wearable technologies with emotional sensing capabilities.
Rachelle Baker
Building Worlds in Illustration
Thursday, March 26, 2027
The lecture will center on building a solid and unique world within a body of work through color, style, and texture no matter the technique or medium.
About the Speaker
Rachelle Baker is a multi-disciplinary artist from Detroit, MI with a background in Relief Printing (Screenprinting, Lino/Woodcutting), Illustration, Comic Art, Video Art, and Music. She is inspired by Shoujo manga, anime and comics bad girls, stoic women dancing in the backgrounds of late 90's/early 2000's R&B videos, and the sound cats make when they're yawning. She is a Capricorn with a Scorpio moon. Published books include: Making Our Way Home: The Great Migration and the Black American Dream by Blair Imani from Ten Speed Press, Shirley Chisholm is a Verb by Veronica Chambers from Dial Books/Penguin Random House, Motherlode: 100+ Women Who Made Hip-Hop by Clover Hope from Abrams Books, and Stamped (for Kids): Racism, Antiracism, and You by Ibram X Kendi and Jason Reynolds Little, Brown Young Readers.
Check out our Past Visiting Speakers
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