Patrick Rock and John Corso Named Visiting Faculty at Cranbrook Academy of Art
Patrick Rock (L) and John Corso (R).
Artists-in-Residence Liz Cohen and Beverly Fishman Awarded Sabbaticals
BLOOMFIELD HILLS, MICH., May 9, 2016 — Patrick Rock and John Corso have been named visiting faculty at Cranbrook Academy of Art for the 2016-2017 academic year. Liz Cohen, Artist-in-Residence and Head of the Photography Department, and Beverly Fishman, Artist-in-Residence and Head of the Painting Department, have each been awarded sabbaticals.
Patrick Rock
Rock will be the visiting Artist-in-Residence in the Photography Department for the fall 2016 semester. Currently based in Portland, Oregon, Rock is a post-conceptual artist and founder and director of ROCKSBOXCONTEMPORARYFINEART. ROCKSBOX is an artist-run, short-term artist residency and exhibition site with a mandate to support artists producing contemporary conceptual and performance-influenced work. He is also a co-creator of “A Portland Conversation in Culture,” a printed guide to contemporary art venues in Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver, BC. Rock is also the past director of the PSU School of Art + Design Exhibition Galleries at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon, where he was a visiting art faculty member in the MFA studio and undergraduate programs.
Rock’s works in performance, installation, sculpture, and video have been exhibited internationally. Most recently with California Split at The Pit in Los Angeles, with accompanying artist-book “California Split” carried by Printed Matter, NYC; I know, I know, I know… at Fourteen 30 Contemporary; PigDogMonkeyManifestos, at Airspace, London, England; and the forced-air-inflated viewer-interactive jump-room-sculpture Oscar’s Delirium Tremens at the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art’s Time-Based Art Festival. He has also performed with the mobile-rolling free restaurant AMERICAN MEAT LLC., and the post-post-post-punk band PISS!, at the Sequences Performance Art Festival in Reykjavik, Iceland.
Patrick Rock is alumnus of the New Genres/Studio-10 program at the San Francisco Art Institute.
Liz Cohen will spend her sabbatical researching the relationship of reality television to web 2.0, oversharing, and attention as currency. During the sabbatical period, she will work on casting and study textile design for costuming, reality television show scripting and river boat design.
John Corso
John Corso will be the visiting Artist-in-Residence for the Painting Department in the fall of 2016. According to Corso, he plans to leverage his love of critical theory to enrich the rigorous studio practice in Cranbrook’s studios. In addition to studio visits, critiques and other studio-based activities, John will offer an introductory seminar on art since 1960, which will look at major art practices within a post-structural framework.
Corso is an extensive researcher and writer. He recently presented a lecture entitled “Reading Race: Art After Ferguson,” at Oakland University. Still in its research stage, this project charts the varied visual responses artists and activists have launched to protest the epidemic of police brutality against people of color in the United States. In a separate project, John is working on a book-length monograph entitled Sheila Pepe: Shadows of Affect. His monograph considers how fiber and craft, which have usually been interpreted with feminist and Marxist lenses, might also be productively considered in the language of affect theory. Finally, the article “Organicism Revisited: Politics and Biological Metaphor in Beverly Fishman’s C.E.L. 109,” whick looks at the anarchist aesthetics in Beverly Fishman’s color palette will appear in the DIA Bulletin later this year.
His essays on art have appeared in The Brooklyn Rail, RACAR: The Canadian Art Review, BE Magazine, Art21 Magazine, ArtPapers and numerous exhibition catalogs. He has also contributed exhibition reviews to Art in America, Art Papers, Hyperallergic and The Huffington Post.
He received his PhD in the History of Art and Visual Studies from Cornell University in 2009. Before Cornell, he earned an MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2003), an MA in art history from Tufts (2003) and a BA in art from Williams College (1997).
Fishman will be spending her sabbatical in New York City and continue work on her latest body of painting—urethane-over-wood reliefs that simultaneously engage with modernist history and pharmaceutical branding. She will work and immerse herself in the city’s unparalleled cultural resources.
“A sabbatical leave for Liz Cohen and Beverly Fishman allows each of them to have focused time for research toward new work,” said Sarah Turner, Dean of Cranbrook Academy of Art. “Our students benefit not only from the professional growth that Liz and Beverly will bring back to the Academy, but also from the unique experience and insights that Patrick Rock and John Corso will bring to our studio spaces.”
