Artist Alice Aycock’s silk screen Preliminary Study for a Theory of Universal Causality(1982) will be the focus of the 2018’s first Art Up Close! program scheduled for Tuesday, Feb. 13.

Presented by Dylan Collins, Assistant Professor and Sculpture Area Coordinator in the School of Art and Design at WVU, the program begins at 5:30 p.m. in the Museum Education Center Grand Hall and is free and open to the public.

The title of Collins’s presentation, Science in the Service of Magic, comes from an interview with Alice Aycock in White Hot magazine.  He will discuss Aycock’s interest in works of art that hybridizes the seemingly opposite conventions of science and magic. 

A native of Illinois, Collins received degrees from Eastern Illinois University, and an MFA in Sculpture from Kent State University.  Before coming to WVU, he was an instructor at Kent State University, Oberlin College and Southeast Missouri State University. 

Upcoming programs are scheduled for Tuesday, Mar. 20, with Jeff Greenham, Professor of Art, Associate Dean and Art Department Coordinator for Fairmont State University’s School of Fine Arts, who teaches ceramics at FSU; and Tuesday, April 17, with Dr. Peter Butler, of the WVU Davis College of Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Design, who teaches landscape architecture. 

Art Up Close! events are held throughout the academic year and present WVU faculty and guest artists from various disciplines discussing a single work of art from the perspectives of their disciplines. The events are co-sponsored by the Friends of the Museum, a membership group for people who enjoy the arts and social, educational and cultural activities revolving around art.

For more information about the program on Feb.13, contact the Art Museum of WVU at (304) 293-7790.