Each year the School of Art invites a diverse group of nationally and internationally recognized artists, designers, and scholars to share their distinct practices and voices with its students and the community. Students and the public alike can engage with these invited practitioners through lectures, screenings, performances, readings, conversations, studio critiques, and workshops.
This program is one of many valuable resources promoted through the School of Art that contributes to the experiences art students need to begin building relationships within the professional art world and to develop a greater understanding and appreciation of contemporary art and culture.
All events are free, non-ticketed, and open to the public unless otherwise specified.
Upcoming Events
FALL 2025
Thursday, September 25, 5 to 7:30 p.m., Student Center, Ballroom
Fred Meyer Lecture in Cultural Policy and Arts Advocacy in partnership with the 2025 Conference on Civic Studies and Democracy at Ball State University
“Arts and Culture as Community Cohesion: The Power of the Sector beyond the Stage and Studio”
5:00–6:00 p.m. | Opening Reception
6:00–7:30 p.m. | Keynote & Q&A
Michael Greer is a seasoned cross-sector leader with decades of experience in for-profit and nonprofit organizations across the United States, India, and China. A firm believer in the interconnectedness of public, private, and nonprofit sectors, Michael advocates for cross-sector collaboration to strengthen community health and drive positive outcomes.
Thursday, October 30, 6pm, AJ 175
How to Fall in Love with Typography
Ellen Lupton
Ellen Lupton is a designer, writer, and educator. The all-new edition of her bestselling book Thinking with Type launched in March 2024. Other books include Design Is Storytelling, Graphic Design Thinking, Health Design Thinking, and Extra Bold. She teaches in the Graphic Design MFA program at MICA. She is a curator emerita at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, where her projects include "Design Beyond Vision" and "Design and Healing: Creative Responses to Epidemics." She is an AIGA Gold Medalist and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Her Type Mom persona on Instagram (@EllenLupton) has over 195K followers.
Faculty Sponsor: Shantanu Suman, Associate Professor of Art (Graphic design)
Tuesday, November 4, 6pm, AJ225
Inside Rigging - My path to Animation, Rigging and Beyond
Sabine Heller
Sabine is a 3D animation industry expert working as the VP, Creative Operations at Mikros Animation with an everlasting passion for animated films and entertainment.
In her 19 years of industry experience, Sabine has worked on commercial projects for clients such as Jägermeister and Ferrero, as well as 3D scanning for visual effects and toys at Gentle Giant Studios. After she discovered her excitement for rigging characters, she moved from her home country Germany to the United States and spent most of her career in the animation industry working on animated features like “Rio”, “Ice Age”, “The Peanuts Movie” and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - Mutant Mayhem" at Blue Sky Studios and Mikros Animation.
Sabine holds a degree in Media System Design from the Hochschule Darmstadt in Germany, and an MFA in Computer Art from the School of Visual Arts in New York. She also received a PhD in Film Studies from the University of Kent in Canterbury and is an active member of Women in Animation, the Visual Effects Society, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Faculty Sponsor: Huali Fu, Assistant Professor of Art (Animation)
SPRING 2025
Tuesday, February 10, 6pm, AJ225
Blueprints for Bahay-Bahayan
Cheeny Celebrado-Royer
Cheeny Celebrado-Royer (b. Naga City, Philippines) is a multidisciplinary artist working with found and discarded materials to create installations, sculptures, and drawings that explore precarity, memory, and displacement. Drawing from decaying architectures and chroma-key aesthetics, she maps fragments of space—wreckage, green or blue tape—into constellations of unstable time and place. Her work reimagines drawing as a form of mapping, assembling familiar-yet-elusive icons into landscapes shaped by liminality. Through building from residue, she explores what might resemble home—transient, cartographic, unresolved.
Cheeny is an Associate Professor in Experimental and Foundation Studies at the Rhode Island School of Design. She holds an MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art (Mount Royal School of Art) and is an alumna of the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Independent Study Program (2025). Her work has been exhibited at the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Walters Art Museum, Brattleboro Museum & Art Center, Columbia College, Louisiana Tech University School of Design, and the RISD Museum.
Faculty Sponsor: James Lambert, Assistant Teaching Professor (Drawing)
Thursday, April 9, 6pm, AJ 225
A Journey in Microcosm
Jiyong Lee
Jiyong Lee is a studio artist and educator based in Carbondale, Illinois. He has taught at Southern Illinois University since 2005, where he leads the glass program. Originally from Seoul, Korea, he received his MFA from Rochester Institute of Technology. Lee has taught and exhibited internationally, with work shown in venues including the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, the Tallinn Applied Art Triennial, and the Loewe Foundation Craft Prize. His sculptures are included in The Corning Museum of Glass, the Barry Art Museum, and Samsung and Chanel corporate collections.
Faculty Sponsor: Jennifer Halvorson, Associate Professor of Art (Glass) & Associate Director of the School of Art
For more information, please contact Lara Kuykendall, Director of the School of Art, lkuykendall@bsu.edu