ELIZABETH LEMIEUX PRATT MUNSON FACULTY LECTURE SERIES
TED FORD
Wednesday, April 1 | noon
Museum of Art | Sinnott Family – Bank of Utica Auditorium
Artist Bio
Since his undergraduate days, Ted Ford has immersed himself in the theory, history, and practice of art. He began teaching at PrattMWP in 2004 and has taught courses including Survey of Art, Nineteenth Century Art, Twentieth Century Modernism, the Fine Arts Seminar, several of the pre-college summer programs, and the Writing Lab. He has exhibited his work in Washington, D.C., New York City, and various galleries in upstate New York.
Ford holds a master’s of fine arts degree in visual art and cultural studies from Vermont College and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Colorado Boulder. He also attended L’École-des-Beaux-Arts in Paris and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Artist Statement
Drawing upon the early European Modernists, through the Abstract Expressionists, the Neo-Avant Garde, and Minimalists, my paintings and sculptures are manifestations of a process of material construction and deconstruction resulting in abstract work that has a sense of the history of its own making.
I am interested in states of ambiguity and uncertainty. The works are formalist but idiosyncratic and I often work in series, generally starting with geometric shapes which then go through permutations resulting in greater complexity. I search out singular manifestations of a simple idea by expanding and undoing. Contradictions arise and are left “unfinished.” I often scrape through a surface to reveal an earlier archeological layer and so inject a sense of time. I enjoy playing with scale, strong color contrasts, and textured surfaces and have been interested in using everyday building materials along with fine art products. Among the many artists who have helped me see are Sol LeWitt, Mel Bochner, Eva Hesse, Robert Mangold, Dorothea Rockburne, and Ellsworth Kelly; also Klee, Matisse, Malevich, Mondrian, Morandi, and Schwitters.
On the Sabbatical
The sabbatical interval allowed me to examine directly hundreds of Modernist works, many of which I discuss in my lecture. The direct study of paintings and sculptures I’ve loved, along with the additional time to work on my own paintings, gave me a deeper appreciation of the physicality of art-making, and a deeper sense of the history of Modernism.
For the Lemieux Lecture
I will give an impressionistic overview of my sabbatical visits to some of America’s great museums. This high-intensity visual exposure led me to question what personal access to art means today in our hyper-digital, increasingly virtual world. I’ve used my camera to delve deeply into surfaces and textural details of the many works which caught my eye, and I hope I’ve captured the unique, signature look of many of the world’s most renowned Modern artists. My focus will be on exploring the dualities of surface and image, of part and whole. And, I will present a visual summary of some of my own studio explorations.
About the Easton Pribble Lecture Series
Seasoned artists are invited to Utica to give presentations as part of the Easton Pribble Lecture Series at the Museum of Art. Named for a beloved late professor of painting and drawing, the mission of the series is to invite guest artists who represent a variety of creative disciplines and bring a diversity of perspectives to inspire, motivate, and challenge students. A faculty-led committee invites artists to Utica each year who amplify voices and illuminate career pathways historically and presently marginalized within the art and design worlds.
