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Saturday, September 8, 3PM Symposium and book signing: The Individual and Tradition, Folkloristic Perspectives Material Culture invites the community to attend a symposium and book-signing centered around the book The Individual and Tradition: Folkloristic Perspectives, on Saturday, September 8. Containing a collection of essays by artists, writers and scholars in folklore and related disciplines, the volume focuses on the way in which creative individuals from around the world respond to societal and artistic tradition. The publication was conceived to honor renowned folklorist Henry Glassie, following his retirement from Indiana University after forty-one years of teaching and leadership in the field. More than a commemorative volume, however, The Individual and Tradition makes a strong contribution to folklore studies by tackling, in each essay, the central issue of the relationship between the legacy of craft and a single creative will. The essays explore the ways in which tradition inspires artists and performers to tell stories and narratives, write poems and sing songs, play music, craft pottery, weave rugs, carve stone or build boats, among other examples. Discussion of some of these essays' topics will form the backbone of the symposium, specific illustrations that serve to celebrate the ways in which humans universally [...]

Lehigh University Art Galleries: Main Gallery, Zoellner Arts Center August 29-December 3, 2012 Material Culture is proud to announce its partnership with Lehigh University in bringing an exhibition titled “African Visions of Barack Obama: Folk and Popular Images of America’s 44th President” to the Main Gallery of Lehigh’s Zoellner Arts Center. All artworks are part of Material Culture’s collection, though the curatorial staff at Lehigh University, led by Norman Girardot and Ricardo Viera, are to be credited for the creation of the exhibition’s design, installation and contextual presentation. These works transcend politics, and invite us, instead, to focus on what connects us across the globe, and art's role as a universal manifestation of humanity's passion and hope. The exhibition will open on August 29, 2012 and run through December 9, 2012. George Jevremovic, founder of Material Culture, relates that when he first traveled to West Africa in search of textiles and other artifacts, the most arresting pieces of art were in fact the ubiquitous painted signs of folk and popular artists. Dotted on roadsides, emblazoned on businesses, these painted works on canvas, board, metal or on the sides of buildings serve to advertise, instruct, or simply delight passersby. Businesses such [...]

Material Culture is proud to announce its next special exhibition, “5 Vermont Artists: Sculpture and Assemblages” which will open on June 30, 2012, and run through July 30. These five talented artists are bound not only by geography, but by a shared communication with natural materials or found objects, and an ability to transform their media into the creation of new, compelling universes. A reception on June 30, from noon to five, will mark the commencement of the exhibition, with two of the artists, Larry Simons and Abby Rieser, present. Artwork by Paul Bowen. Paul Bowen is known for his earthy, muscular works of found wood and metal. Born in 1951 in Wales, he entered art school there in 1968 and graduated four years later with a degree in Art and Design, working, as he says, “in the space between painting and sculpture.” His further studies brought him to the Maryland Institute, where his love for abstract expressionism deepened in his work with Grace Hartigan, Ed Dugmore and Sal Scarpitta and his exploration of the New York art scene. It was his move back to the U.K., however, to take a post in the department of sculpture at [...]