Arts Center announces 2015-2016 artists-in-residence

Printmaker Amanda Maciuba and ceramicist Christy Wittmer are the Lawrence Arts Center’s 2015-2016 artists-in-residence.

Starting Aug. 1, the artists will teach classes, assist in running studios, take part in community-driven projects and create a new body of work during their one-year residency at the Lawrence Arts Center, 940 New Hampshire St.

Aside from quality of work and innovation, artists are chosen based on their effectiveness as teachers and communicators, says Kyla Strid, director of residencies and adult education at the Arts Center. She says that out of the 40 applicants, Maciuba and Wittmer had the strongest “balance of all these attributes.”

“Ours is not a residency where you can hide in your studio and not interact with the community,” says Strid, who participated in the Arts Center’s 2013-2014 residency program before taking on her current position. “We want them to be a part of Lawrence and engage with students and everyone who walks through the doors.”

Maciuba graduated from the University of Buffalo in 2009 with a bachelor’s degree in visual studies and a concentration in print media before earning a master’s degree in printmaking from the University of Iowa this year.

She is also the recipient of a Certificate of the Book from the University of Iowa’s Center for the Book. Maciuba, who has shown her work nationally, completed an artist residency at the Iowa Lakeside Laboratory last summer.

“We’re really interested in Amanda’s work because she’s doing a lot with place, and we’re really interested in placemaking and arts in the community,” Strid says. “We thought her work was really relevant to what we’re working on and what we want to engage in down the road.”

Wittmer received a bachelor’s degree in painting and sculpture from Miami University in Ohio, has studied ceramics at San Diego City College and Ohio State University, and earned a master’s degree in ceramics from the University of Cincinnati last year.

Since then, she has been working as a glaze chemist at Cincinnati’s Rockwood Pottery. Wittmer has participated in artist-in-residence programs in Berlin, Jingdezhen, China, and most recently at the Banff Centre in Banff, Alberta.

“Christy’s work was really strong, material-wise. The way she handles materials and how she uses them in space in relation to the body, we thought would add something interesting to the conversation here,” Strid says. “Christy is really and truly invested in her work.”