Contact: Margaret Kovar
STARKVILLE, Miss.--Mississippi State's art and communication departments will host the 2012 Society for Photographic Education South Central Conference Oct. 25-28.
Titled "Nothing Ventured/Nothing Gained: The Creative Risk," the gathering will focus on the risks artists take in the conceptual and technical aspects of their work, as well as challenges they must overcome in visual research.
With a number of the events at MSU open to the general public, the conference will examine the diversity of photographic practice by addressing the three major physical sectors of photography: traditional, digital and alternative processes.
Internationally known artists, including Todd Hido, Kelli Connell and Susan Burnstine, will be making presentations.
In coordination with the conference, several campus photography exhibitions are being featured Oct. 16. - Nov. 2. Free and open all, they include:
--Works by Hido, Connell, Burnstine and Dornith Doherty, the SPESC Honored Educator and Guggenheim Fellow, in the art department's ground-floor McComas Hall Gallery;
--An SPE members' exhibition, along with work by the North Texas Alternative Process, in the art department's Visual Art Center, located just off campus on University Drive; and
--An SPE student members' exhibition in the Colvard Student Union Gallery.
Also, a panel discussion for high school educators and students will take place 10-11 a.m. Oct. 26 in the student union's Fowlkes Auditorium. Topics related to incorporating photography and photographic technology into the Mississippi high school art curriculum will be covered.
"SPE members will address questions and concerns those high school educators and students might have about photographic education, careers in photography, photography as art and much more," said Dominic Lippillo, assistant professor of art and SPESC co-chair.
Registration is available at a discounted rate for high school educators and free for high school students, who must be registered by their art teachers.
The conference is funded in part by a $3,000 Mississippi Arts Commission grant. Established in 1968, the MAC serves the state residents by providing support for programs that enhance communities, assist artists and arts organizations, promote the arts in education, and celebrate Mississippi's cultural heritage.
The Society for Photographic Education is a nonprofit membership organization created to provide a forum for the discussion of photography and related media as a means of creative expression and cultural insight. For more, visit www.spenational.org.
For registration information and additional details on the conference, contact Lippillo at 662-325-2970 or dlippillo@caad.msstate.edu.