Artist Mike Glier Discusses Observation and Abstraction of the Living World

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass., February 26, 2021—Mike Glier, artist and Alexander Falck Class of 1899 Professor of Art at Williams College, will present the second of six talks in the 2021 Faculty Lecture Series at Williams College. Titled “Answer Music: Observation and Abstraction of The Living World,” Glier will focus on three bodies of recent work inspired by landscapes and American Modernists, The Forests of Antarctica, Field Notes and Answer Music. The talk, which is free and open to the public, will be presented online via Zoom on Thursday, March 4, from 4:15 to 5:30 p.m.

Please use the following link to join the webinar:
https://williams.zoom.us/j/96657504618?pwd=SmVqMVRXNXdFRi9IVjhMYXpKWkhjUT09
Passcode: 097763

Glier makes drawings and paintings about the human relationship with the environment. “Although I love much landscape painting that falls in the realist camp, it’s the overlay of abstraction that Marin, O’Keeffe, Dove, Burchfield, et al. brought to it that best expresses the mutability and vitality I find there,” Glier said. “I’m very taken with Robin Wall Kimmerer’s phrase, ‘the grammar of animacy’ as it applies to art and nature.”

A recipient of a National Endowment Fellowship in drawing, and a Guggenheim Fellowship in painting, he has had solo exhibitions at Krakow Witkin Gallery, Boston; Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York; Gerald Peters Gallery, New York and Santa Fe; and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

The Drawing Center, N.Y, The Tyler Gallery, Philadelphia, and the Opalka Gallery, Albany, N.Y., have sponsored national touring exhibitions of Glier’s work, and he has participated in the Whitney Museum Biennial, N.Y. He has also exhibited internationally at the Lisson Gallery, London; Tanya Grunert Gallery, Cologne; American Graffiti, Amsterdam; and Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, and he was the Artist and Educator in Residence at Hauser and Wirth Gallery, Somerset, England.

This talk is presented as part of the spring 2021 Faculty Lecture Series. The series was founded in 1911 by Catherine Mariotti Pratt, the spouse of a faculty member who wanted to “relieve the tedium of long New England winters with an opportunity to hear Williams professors talk about issues that really mattered to them.” From these humble and lighthearted beginnings, the Faculty Lecture Series has grown to become an important forum for tenured professors to share their latest research with the larger intellectual community of the college.

The Faculty Lecture Series is organized by the faculty members of the Lecture Committee. The aim of the series is to present big ideas beyond disciplinary boundaries. The next lectures in the series will be offered on March 11, 25 and April 1, all beginning at 4:15 p.m. The lectures are free and open to the public.

For more information, visit the events calendar on the Williams College website at events.williams.edu.