I am a frequent presenter, chair, and lecturer at national, regional, university-sponsored, and local conferences and lecture series. Presentations, lectures, papers and works in progress concern the intersection of photography, graphics, communication and media in communicating the richness of response to place and development in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The United States as a vessel of image making and change is the key area of study; regions studied relate directly to my former (Cleveland) and present (Winchester) homes. Art history is viewed as an expansive and expanding field. My interests cover modern, contemporary, and Renaissance art, with nodal points in landscape art, industrial photography, the art of Leonardo da Vinci, and contemporary feminist art. A secondary area for my research and writing is that of spirituality, nature, and art, pursued in presentations, papers, and meditations and illustrated by my artworks and installations.



My theoretical interests lie in postmodern and feminist theory and particularly in “matrixiality,” a field of investigation that plumbs the strength and permeability of boundaries. Writers I consult and admire include feminist art historian Griselda Pollock, feminist artist and psychologist Bracha Lichtenberg-Ettinger, philosopher Gaston Bachelard, physicist John Polkinghorne, and photography historians Alan Trachtenberg, Allan Sekula, and Abigail Solomon-Godeau, among others. My primary fields of research, publication, and “excavation” are art and cartography; the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia in the antebellum, Civil War, and postbellum years; the railroad as an index and placemarker of landscape; Leonardo da Vinci and the intersections of anatomy, landscape, and mapping; Alfred Stieglitz, the topic of my first book (New York: Garland, 1990); and the photography of Margaret Bourke-White in this Midwestern corporate context (future book for Kent State University Press).





Art and Art History Presentations

"Harpers Ferry: The Art and the Place"
Local article, Museum of the Shenandoah Valley presentation

"Harpers Ferry: Interpreting Photographs as History, Culture and Landscape Art, 1860-1940"
Center for Civil War Photography Newsletter (scroll down for presentation listing)

Collaborations, Intersections, and Overlays: Drawing in a "Mixed-Media" Field of Possibilities
Powerpoint presentation

Frances Benjamin Johnston and The Ladies' Home Journal Visit the Country of Sheridan's Ride
Edited presentation
Newspaper article on Women's History Month presentation




Matrixiality, Mapping, and Great Ladies: (Im)posing Postmodern Perspectives on Leonardo’s Femininities
Abstract

Leonardo da Vinci, Centre College Press release
This link will take you to an online exhibition on Leonardo, art and natural phenomena.
Leonardo's Codex Leicester: A Masterpiece of Science




Collage and Matrixiality: Sacred Precincts, Bounded Chaos
Presentation (without images)

The Arts, Science, and the Sacred in Nature: Healing Forces in a Changing World
Precis and Abstract

Collage as Celebration
National Collage Society Juried Exhibition 2001 Catalog Essay
Essay
Powerpoint presentation



Concerning the Art of Spirituality: Forays into and out from the Forest of the Soul
Presentation (without images)



Topographies of the Soul: Altars on the Threshold of Wilderness
The Arts and the Spiritual: School of Visual Arts Fifteenth Annual National Conference on Liberal Arts and the Education of Artists, October 2001
Presentation (without images)



Southeastern College Art Conference
I frequently present papers and chair sessions in art history and studio art at the annual meetings of SECAC (Southeastern College Art Conference). This link will direct you to the current or most recent SECAC conference page.
2006 Annual Conference

Southeastern College Art Conference (SECAC)
2004 Mapping and Art session
2005 Annual Conference schedule
2005 Mapping and Art session
Mapping and Art introduction
2007 Mapping and Territorialization session
SECAC Newsletter November 2007
SECAC Newsletter April 2008

Community Arts and University Service Presentations

Arts Management "Dash," Shenandoah University, April 2006
Flyer - Handout, Kiefer workshop session, "How to Get Hung"


See the Shenandoah Arts Council page for additional community arts presentations


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