Echoes Research Committee:
Penny Arcade

What artists say in public—about their life, context, references and readings of their work—has always been of great significance in scholarly interpretation and art history. An artist talk developed into a format in itself as a glimpse into the intimacy of the creative process. However, articulating one’s own work is not an easy task. For some artists, the “explanation” may dismiss the work, whereas for others, it becomes part of it.

Artist Penny Arcade joins us to participate in Echoes Research Committee—our ongoing gatherings and experiments with the lecture as an artistic format. Penny first visited Skowhegan as a figure model during 1977 while living in an artist’s colony nearby in central Maine, attending and listening to lectures in the historic Fresco Barn. She returned as visiting faculty to give her own lecture in 1993 alongside her dear friend and fellow artist Agosto Machado, and amidst a monumental project organizing and archiving the life’s work of groundbreaking filmmaker, actor, and artist Jack Smith. She returns now to Skowhegan NYC with these memories across her work as a performance artist and artist advocate, looking to the Lecture Archive as a new material, entwined with the ongoing life of New York City’s queer arts communities and downtown performance history.