Visiting Faculty Lecture:
Laura Owens
Type
Lecture
Series
Barbara Lee Lecture Series
Location
Old Dominion Fresco Barn
Skowhegan Campus
39 Art School Rd
Madison, ME 04950
Date
7:30 PM
Related from The Library
For the final lecture of our 2026 Barbara Lee Lecture Series, we are especially happy to welcome Laura Owens back to Skowhegan. After being a participant in 1994, this will be her first return to campus in more than three decades.
Laura will reflect on a practice that has continually reimagined what painting can be. Moving effortlessly between abstraction, figuration, and decoration, her work embraces an irreverent and playful constellation of references—from embroidery, textiles, and printed matter to ornament and everyday visual culture.
About the artist:
Laura Owens was born in 1970, in Euclid, Ohio and works in Los Angeles, California. She has exhibited extensively, including a mid-career survey at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2017), and, most recently, a solo exhibition at Matthew Marks Gallery, New York (2025), where her work continues to explore and expand on site-specific immersive painting installations. She studied at California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Skowhegan, ME (both in 1994), and Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI (1992).
About The Barbara Lee Lecture Series:
The Barbara Lee Lecture Series is an annual series that features faculty artists during our summer program. During this series, we open our campus to the public, welcoming our friends and neighbors into the conversations that take place at the School. After the summer program, the lectures become part of the Lecture Archive, a growing collection of recordings that can be accessed online or on request.
