School of Music Visiting Artist
Michael Demps (b. 1976 in Detroit, MI) is an interdisciplinary artist, musician, and DJ. A graduate of Calarts, and the Yale School of Art, he now serves on the sculpture faculty at VCUarts, and was recently included in “Fictions”, an exhibition of emerging artists at The Studio Museum in Harlem. His sculptures have incorporated candle wax, magnetic marbles, rock salt, and low frequency sounds. His upcoming performance as part of Rashid Johnson’s “Monument” at the ICA at VCU In Richmond, VA, will draw on his experiences as a hip hop practitioner / vinyl collector, with a collection that numbers over 5,000 records.
Douglas Kearney has published six books, most recently, Buck Studies (Fence Books, 2016) winner of the Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Prize, the CLMP Firecracker Award for Poetry, and silver medalist for the California Book Award (Poetry). BOMB says: “[Buck Studies] remaps the 20th century in a project that is both lyrical and epic, personal and historical.” He earned an MFA in Writing at CalArts (2004) where he taught until May 2017. He now teaches Creative Writing at the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities.