Altoona Virtual Lecture Series: Technology

This virtual lecture series is designed to present the artworks of the contemporary artists while highlighting the importance of the two galleries of permanent collection pieces. These scholarly conversations will explore the medium of photography through its history, contemporary uses, and its possible future.

Artists Eric Charlton and Lori Hepner use technology as an integral piece of their artistic process. Lori Hepner uses, among other methods, tweets from the popular social media site, Twitter, and creates abstract renderings of the characters through an algorithm. Eric Charlton’s After, Christina , on view at Southern Alleghenies Museum in Altoona, pays homage to Andrew Wyeth’s Christina’s World . Charlton created a virtual environment through computer software, translating the original masterpiece into this digital space. Throughout this conversation, the artists will share their artistic practices, discuss the role of technology in art, and answer attendees questions. This event will last one hour and is free to the public.

Eric D. Charlton is an American artist originally from the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains in Western Pennsylvania. Charlton’s work is exploring the desire for meaning and the lack of human understanding from a cosmic scale to the minutiae of the everyday. He embraces an open studio practice that centers around a broad definition of objecthood and the absurd acts of

humans trying to make sense of the world. He earned his MFA at Syracuse University. Charlton has been the recipient of residencies at Tuner Semester Residency in Los Angeles, CA, Kimmel Harding Nelson, Nebraska City, NE, as well as Watershed Center for Ceramic Arts, Farmington, ME. He has exhibited internationally, including CICA Museum, Gimpo, South Korea, the 2019 Miami University Young Sculptors Competition at Hiestand Galleries, Miami University, Oxford, OH, Das Giftraum, Berlin, Germany, Monte Vista Projects Los Angeles, CA, and The Sculpture Center, Cleveland, OH. Charlton currently works at Allegheny College in Meadville, PA, as an instructor of Sculpture and Digital Art, as well as 3D technical support.

Lori Hepner is a Pittsburgh based new media artist working primarily in new media performance, wearable technologies, fine art photography, and community centered public art projects. She has spent considerable time over the last five years in artist residencies in 2 Pittsburgh neighborhoods, in a small Arctic Community in coastal Norway, as well as in Finland,

Iceland, and the Canadian Yukon. She was recently a Fulbright Scholar in the island community of Træna, Norway where she founded a community makerspace and plastic recycling project for 3D printing. Lori was featured in the WQED documentary, Visible , featuring five female artists from Pittsburgh, in Spring 2018, and focusing on the Color Beechview project, an

intergenerational, community centered public art project in the city neighborhood of Beechview. A collaboration with singer Kendra Ross has manifested itself into live performance as Hepner & Ross in Intersection*ology . A feminist exploration into the power of women, technology, and individual voices, she developed the real ‑ time, light painting system that is used to draw with light using the body. Intersection*ology has been awarded grants by the Heinz Endowments, the 2018 Carnegie International , and The Opportunity Fund and has been performed at the Kelly Strayhorn Theater’s Alloy Studios, in Durban, South Africa, the InLight Richmond Festival in Richmond, Virginia, and at the Luminaria Festival in San Antonio, Texas.