Visiting Critic Program
About
As part of the Time and Space Residency Program, PenArt invites a critic to conduct studio visits with residents each session. Accomplished artists, educators, and curators, our visiting critics operate at the forefront of artistic dialogue; offering a range of unique perspectives, experiences, and thoughts. Studio visits are one hour in length and are designed to strengthen and support the advancement of residents’ work and their engagement with the larger art world.
Tanya Gayer
Tanya Gayer is a curator and writer based in Sheboygan, WI. Her curatorial projects and research examine archives, databases, governmental assimilation efforts, and algorithmic categorizations. She studies the records and stories involved in such history-making processes to realize the impact they have in forming identity and culture. Gayer received her dual masters degree in Curatorial Practice and Visual + Critical Studies from California College of the Arts and her BFA from University of Nevada, Reno.
Her curatorial projects have exhibited at John Michael Kohler Arts Center; Root Division; Hubbell Street Galleries; Sonoma Valley Museum of Art; The Internet Archive; Gray Area; CTRL + SHFT; Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts; Pro Arts Gallery; Embark Gallery; Adobe Books Backroom Gallery; among many more. She has been in residence at Rogers Art Loft; Wassaic Project; Picture Berlin; and Signal Culture. Her writing has been published in Daily Serving, in exhibition catalogs associated with CULT Exhibitions; Holland Project; Women & Their Work; Pro Arts; Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts; the Marjorie Barrick Museum; among others. Gayer has lectured at UC Santa Barbara, UC San Diego, University of Mississippi, California College of the Arts, and at the CODAME Art + Tech Festival. She has held curatorial and exhibition-related positions at Sonoma Valley Museum of Art, Soundwave, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among others. She is currently the Associate Curator at John Michael Kohler Arts Center.
Photo by Sunny Leerasanthanah
Melissa Oresky
Through her collage and painting based multidisciplinary practice, Melissa Oresky seeks to recognize plants, in all their mystery and ubiquity, as perceptive and expressive beings. Her endeavor to paint with plants comes out of a long interest in landscape, biology, and abstraction, and is informed by embodied observation, as well as by scientific, historical, and vernacular forms of knowledge such as herbaria and field-guides. Recent exhibitions and curatorial projects include Boundary, Chicago; The Elmhurst Art Museum, Elmhurst, IL; Field Projects, NYC; and The Franklin, Chicago. Melissa has published several artist’s books and prints with Kayrock Screenprinting, Brooklyn. She is currently a 2023 Wallis-Annenberg Helix fellow and has attended residencies including the Santa Fe Art Institute, NM; Schloss Plüschow, Germany; and Skowhegan, ME. Melissa received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago. She lives and works in Normal, IL where she teaches at Illinois State University.
Shane Walsh
Shane Walsh is a painter who uses collage as a conceptual framework for understanding the legacy of abstraction. He works to re-construct an image of abstraction that feels appropriate to his time and place with a process that involves collage, photography, and digital technology. Shane creates complex hybrids that synthesize abstract painting with visual languages from 1990’s subcultures. Shane has taught in the Painting and Drawing area at University of Wisconsin’s Peck School of the Arts since 2009 and his work has been included in solo and group shows in New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, St. Louis, and Miami. He is represented by Asya Geisberg Gallery (New York) and The Alice Wilds (Milwaukee).
Shane McAdams
Shane McAdams is an artist, writer, curator, educator, and papa. His artwork has been exhibited at Allegra LaViola Gallery, Marlborough Gallery, Elizabeth Leach Gallery, The Alice Wilds, Storefront, Scream London, Artistree, The Schneider Museum, The Haggerty Museum of Art, The Kohler Art Center, as well as other venues. Shane’s work has been reviewed by Vogue Magazine, The New York Times, The New York Observer, The Huffington Post, and the Village Voice. He has taught at the Rhode Island School of Design and Marian University. Shane is a three-time Creative Capital, Andy Warhol Foundation Writer’s Grant finalist. His writing appeared regularly in the Brooklyn Rail from 2002 to 2012. He has also contributed The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and currently writes for the Shepherd Express for which he received the Visual Arts Achievement in Arts Writing from the Wisconsin Academy of Arts and Letters. In addition to writing and painting, Shane is also a co-partner in REAL TINSEL, an art space on the southside of Milwaukee.