Posters bearing slogans about civility, free speech, and other timely topics will be displayed clothesline-style and distributed along the John Ward-Joe Johnson Pedestrian Mall on Friday.
The poster exhibition is being staged by the School of Art, the printmaking program, and the Department of English as part of a week filled with events featuring Kyle Schlesinger, founder of Cuneiform Press.
A professor of publishing at the University of Houston-Victoria and a letterpress printer for two decades, Schlesinger established Cuneiform Press, a nonprofit literary arts organization, in 2000. Cuneiform Press specializes in publishing poetry, artists’ books, and books-about-books in the tradition of the independent press.
Schlesinger will present a public lecture on Cuneiform Press at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, October 12, in Art and Architecture Room 109. The presentation will cover his art and publishing endeavors. He will present a program geared to students interested in self-publishing art, literature, and music at 5 p.m. on Tuesday, October 10, in McClung Tower Room 1210.
During the week, Schlesinger will work with UT faculty and students on creating hundreds of screenprinted posters for the exhibition, which is based on a public art project he’s done in other cities called A People’s Curriculum for the United States. The project creates posters “written, printed, and distributed by the people and for the people.”
The posters will be given away on the Pedestrian Walkway from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Friday, October 13.
Schlesinger earned his doctorate from the State University of New York, Buffalo. His dissertation was “Letterpress Printing in the Postmodern Era: Poetry, Media, and Typography.”
Schlesinger has an extensive record of self-published and peer-reviewed books, book chapters, and journal articles encompassing critical, literary, and creative works. He has been a regular contributor to the Journal of Artist Books and has two creative books, Duration (co-authored with Aaron Cohick) and Poetry & Typography, due to be published this year.
For more information on Schlesinger’s visit or the poster exhibition, contact Beauvais Lyons, blyons@utk.edu.
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CONTACT:
Beauvais Lyons, School of Art, blyons@utk.edu
Amy Blakely (865-974-5034 or 865-333-8128, ablakely@utk.edu)