Contact: Anna Owens

STARKVILLE, Miss.—A renowned Canadian artist is opening the Contact Visiting Artist series hosted by Mississippi State’s Department of Art.

Free and open to all, Amy Friend’s lecture will take place Friday [Nov. 8] at 2:30 p.m. in Giles Hall’s Harrison Auditorium. The series’ main sponsor is the Department of Art’s photography concentration.

Dominic Lippillo, MSU associate professor of photography, said the word “contact” in the series’ title has a two-fold meaning. It refers to contact sheets photographers make in the darkroom to see what they captured on a roll of film, as well as the Department of Art’s efforts to maintain relationships with artists using photography in new and exciting ways. 

“Amy Friend’s work encompasses photography by employing a practice that utilizes found images and found objects, and her research pushes the boundaries of what a photograph is and what photography can be,” Lippillo said. “I would encourage anyone who is interested in photography or art to attend her lecture, especially our students.”

Friend’s photography has appeared internationally at festivals in the U.S., Greece, South Korea and Spain, among others. She was selected as a top 50 photographer for three consecutive years in Critical Mass, an international photography competition hosted by Portland-based arts nonprofit Photolucida.

An alumna of York University, Friend holds a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Windsor and is an assistant professor in the Department of Visual Arts at Brock University Niagara in Ontario, Canada.

For more information about the Contact Visiting Artist series, contact Lippillo at dlippillo@caad.msstate.edu.

MSU’s Department of Art features undergraduate concentrations in fine arts, graphic design and photography, as well as classes in a studio environment. For more, visit www.caad.msstate.edu/majors/art.

MSU is Mississippi’s leading university, available online at www.msstate.edu.