At some point, during one episode of late night scheming about projects and plans for Dallas – making it livelier, more livable, introducing more tension, more madness – the name Nick Cave came up. No, not the genius Australian, gothicly-inclined singer (though, he too could make things more interesting around here), but the artist Nick Cave, who is best known for donning wild suits which he incorporates into art performances. Here is one such performance:
Well, as it turns out, Nick Cave just happens to have studied at the University of North Texas back in the 1980s, and he was just named the UNT’s artist-in-residence for the 2011-2012 academic year. Could get interesting.
Here’s the full release.
Renowned artist Nick Cave to serve as UNT’s artist-in-residence
DENTON (UNT), Texas ¾ Internationally renowned visual and performance artist Nick Cave, whose work has been called “Must Be Seen to Be Believed” by the New York Times, will serve as the artist-in-residence for the University of North Texas Institute for the Advancement of the Arts in the 2011-2012 academic year.
Cave will visit UNT twice in the fall and twice in the spring to work with students, faculty members and community members in master classes, workshops and public lectures.
Cave, who studied at UNT in the 1980s, also has been commissioned by the UNT Art Galleries and the institute to create a new performance piece that will take place on campus in the spring with collaborative partners from the College of Music, Department of Dance and Theatre and other UNT arts programs. The piece will incorporate 30 newly created Soundsuits in the shapes of horse-like forms that move through campus and evolve into hybrid beings. Cave is renowned for his elaborate Soundsuits sculptures — wearable art made of such items as twigs, beads, sequins, Easter grass and dryer lint. When worn, his Soundsuits envelop the body, making sounds as the materials brush together.
“Nick Cave’s residency and performance are significant for students as opportunities to interact with an artist who will not only share his extensive experience, but also allow students to participate as collaborators,” said Tracee Robertson, UNT Art Galleries director. “This is an opportunity for students from different arts disciplines and colleges to engage with each other through their own aesthetic languages and approaches in creating a unified work of art. The strength and breadth of the arts at UNT have uniquely prepared us for this experience.”
In addition, Cave will be the featured speaker at the annual Nasher Lecture Series presented by the UNT College of Visual Arts and Design at 7 p.m. Oct. 11 (Tuesday) at the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas.
About Nick Cave
Cave has had numerous one-person exhibitions, including a large traveling exhibition, Nick Cave: Meet Me at the Center of the Earth, organized by the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco in 2009 and featured at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art and Fowler Museum, University of California Los Angeles, Norton Museum in West Palm Beach, Fla., and at the Seattle Art Museum. Cave received the prestigious Joan Mitchell Foundation Award in 2008, the Artadia Award, the United States Artist Award and the Joyce Foundation Joyce Award in 2006, Creative Capital Grants in 2004 and 2002, and the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award in 2001. His work is in many public art collections, including the Brooklyn Museum of Art in New York, Birmingham Museum of Art in Alabama, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, The Portland Art Museum in Oregon, and the Studio Museum in Harlem, N.Y., among others. Cave is represented by Jack Shainman Gallery in New York and will have his third solo exhibition there in September 2011.
Cave earned a bachelor of fine arts degree from the Kansas City Art Institute in 1981 and a master of fine arts degree from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., in 1988, after beginning graduate studies in 1984 at UNT, where he worked with professors Vincent Falsetta in painting and Shigeko Spear in fibers. Cave also was trained as a dancer by the renowned Alvin Ailey Dance Theater.
