Dillon Raborn moderated the June Let’s Talk: Art series featuring the “Lion Pride” exhibit’s artists.
File Photo/The Lion’s Roar
Hammond Regional Arts Center ended this season’s Let’s Talk: Art series with a discussion with the “Lion Pride” exhibition’s artists.
“The event we are speaking of for this LTA event is not actually a lecture but rather a discussion panel between myself as a moderator and the three participating artists of the Hammond Regional Arts Center’s exhibition, ‘Lion Pride,’” said Moderator Dillon Raborn. “The artists are all recent Southeastern fine arts graduates, one of which is pursuing a working career in the field while the other two have recently been accepted into M.F.A. programs in California and Illinois.”
Raborn asked the artists various questions about their processes of making tangible art.
“The panel will begin with the artists discussing the work they have shown in the exhibition,” said Raborn. “The topics I intend to bring up after this are varied but revolve around three primary angles to engage in discussions of art and art-making. These are formalities, processes and conceptualizations. The section on processes is intended to allow them to describe the transformation of abstract ideas into real-world labor and an artist’s duty to be absolutely fluid between those two realms.”
Raborn is an alumnus of the university who went on to pursue a master’s degree.
“I don’t have much to say in images, so I instead deliberately chose a long-suffering career path which allows me to speak about and through the work of others,” said Raborn. “As such, I graduated with a Fine Arts B.A. from Southeastern in spring 2015 with an art history concentration, and this May graduated from Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, with an M.A. in the same field. I’m home for a short break but eventually intend to finish my terminal degree in the field.”
Raborn will be giving a lecture as part of next year’s Let’s Talk: Art series in September.
“The September lecture will be based on a seminar paper I constructed in the fall semester of 2016 while I was at Rutgers,” said Raborn. “The lecture will be about iconographic appropriation in Italian Baroque painting, specifically within the work of Valentin de Boulogne, a French caravaggisti living in Rome in the early 17th century.”
Raborn feels the Let’s Talk: Art series is something special that people should treasure.
“I hope they cherish the opportunity to experience the richness of a university-caliber forum without the necessity of being tested on the material weeks later,”said Raborn. “Also, it’s free. Given the small scale of the various communities along the Northshore, there are not many outlets for art criticism or public access to ongoing scholarship in the fields of art and art history. The LTA lecture series provides precisely that outlet, and it ought to be cherished.”
