9:00am – 12:30pm

Everson will lead a workshop focused on his method of film making. Areas to be covered include the processes of 16mm film making, distribution strategies, creative concepts, methods of research, and visual expression.

With a sense of place and historical research, Kevin Jerome Everson films combine scripted and documentary moments with rich elements of formalism. The subject matter is the gestures or tasks caused by certain conditions in the lives of working class African Americans and other people of African descent. The conditions are usually physical, social- economic circumstances or weather. Instead of standard realism he favors a strategy that abstracts everyday actions and statements into theatrical gestures, in which archival footage is re-edited or re- staged, real people perform fictional scenarios based on their own lives and historical observations intermesh with contemporary narratives. The films suggest the relentlessness of everyday life—along with its beauty— but also present oblique metaphors for art-making.

Kevin Jerome Everson (b.1965) was born and raised in Mansfield, Ohio. He has a MFA from Ohio University and a BFA from the University of Akron. He is currently an Associate Professor of Art at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville. Everson has received fellowships from the Guggenheim, NEA, NEH, Ohio Arts Council and the Virginia Museum, an American Academy Rome Prize, grants from Creative Capital and the Mid-Atlantic, residencies at Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, Yaddo and MacDowell Colony, and numerous university fellowships.

This event is made possible by support from the National Museum of African American History and Culture, ARTSlab, UNM Fine Arts.