Lee Walton is an artist with an expanded practice that includes drawing, new media, performance, and social practice. Lee's experiential art works employ system of rule, chance and open collaboration. Lee works with museums, institutions, universities and cities from around the world to develops participatory public events, leads workshops, exhibits, and educates.
Lee is a Professor of Art at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro . He is also the Director of Interdisciplinary Art and Social Practice and Associate Director of the School of Art. In 2016, he worked directly with Adam Carlin and Lawrence Jenkens to develop the (GPS) Greensboro Project Space, a place that celebrates public life through art, culture and education.
Education
Lee earned his Masters in Fine Art from the California College of Arts in 2000 and his BFA in Art from San Jose State University in 1998.
Professor of Art at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.(2007-present) Courses taught range new media, video, performance art, print-media, intaglio, web design, participatory art, and social practice. Instructor of the Laboratory course at Parsons the New School for Design, New York. (2006-7) This experimental course explored research methods and design with focus on public space and technology interaction. Studio Program Coordinator at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. (2005-2006) Developed studio program and curriculum for On-Site Education Program.
Selected invitations include Carnegie Mellon, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Portland State University, Parsons, The New School For Art and Design, Art Institute of Boston, Sarah Lawrence College, Haverford College, Maryland Institute College of Art, The Kitchen (NY), University of Ulster (Belfast, Ireland), San Francisco State University, San Francisco Art Institute, and Emory University.
Teaching Excellence Award (Nominee, 2013 and 2016), Betty Cone Medal of Arts Award (Nominee, 2011) in the College of Arts & Sciences, UNCG. Year in Review Awards (2011), by Americans for the Arts for top 50 most outstanding public art projects of the year. In collaboration with Jon Rubin. Selected artist from 100 Years of California College of the Arts(2007). S.J. Truman Award, National Academy Museum, New York. (2006)
Notable solo-exhibitions venues include; Kraushaar Galleries (New York, NY), Olson Gallery, Bethel University, (Saint Paul, MN), RAYGUN LAB, Toowoomba, Australia, Crisp-Ellert Art Museum (St. Augustine, Florida), 667 Shotwell, (San Francisco, CA).
Selected group exhibitions include; Buildering, Misbehaving The City, Baffler Art Museum . More Love: Art, Politics, and Sharing Since the 1990s Ackland Art Museum, The University of North Carolina, (Chapel Hill, NC), Liquid Light, Knoxville Museum of Art, (Knoxville, TN), Hotel Maria Kapel (Hoorn, Netherlands),Eyebeam, (New York, NY), Haskins Laboratory at the Yale Research Center (New Haven, CT), The Power Plant, (Toronto, Canada), Schroeder Romero Gallery, (New York, NY), The City Museum of Ljubljana, (Ljubljana, Slovenia), Naples Museum of Art, (Naples, Florida), Artists Space, (New York, NY), Columbus Museum, (Columbus, Georgia),Telfair Museum of Art, (Savannah, Georgia), Knoxville Museum of Art, (Knoxville, Tennessee), Oakland Museum of California, (Oakland, CA), Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery, (New York, NY), Island #6 Art Center, (Shanghai, China), National Academy Museum, (New York, NY), White Columns, (New York, NY).
Recognized as a pioneer of web-based participatory art. Red Ball: San Francisco (2001) explored social media, daily video logging (now know as vlogging), and online voting. Other projects that utilize the social aspects of the web include, One Shot A Day (2003), Free Throw Competition with Shaquille O'Neal (2005), Wappenings (2005-present), and F'Book, What My Friends Are Doing On Facebook (2009).
Articles and reviews range the New York Times, Art News, SF Moma, Art Forum, Monopol Magazine (Berlin) and Rhizome.
"Mapping: A Critical Introduction to Cartography and GIS" By Jeremy W. Crampton Blackwell Publishing; "Net Works: Case Studies of Web Projects" by Burrough, Xtine. Routledge; Text Book; "More Love: Art, Politics, and Sharing since the 1990s", by Claire Schneider; "Walking and Mapping: Artists as Cartographers" by Karen O'Rourke published by MIT Press. The Experiential Project published by Art In General
Martin Z. Margulies Warehouse, Public Collection, Miami, FL Hood Museum at Dartmouth, Permanent Collection, New Hampshire Knoxville Museum of Art, Permanent Collection, Knoxville, TN The Columbus Museum, Permanent Collection, Columbus, GA Reykjavik Art Museum, Permanent Collection, Reykjavik, Iceland Arkansas Arts Center, Permanent Collections, Little Rock, AR Deutsche Bank Collection, Private Collection, New York, NY David Ross, Private Video Collection Regan Grusy, Private Video Collection Marisa S. Olson, Curator, Rhizome, NY Heather Marx and Steve Zavattero, Private Collection Ken Knabb, City System, Personal Collection. Leif Bjelland, Private Collection Jeannene Przyblyski, S.F.B.U.S., Permanent Collection and Archive California College of Arts, Print Collection James T. Dyke Collection, Private Collection, Little Rock, AR The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The First Annual Printable Principles of Dialogue Print Portfolio, New York, NY.
Lee Walton, 2021
My art is a series of strategies for creating new experiences. Situations unfold and through participation, the work becomes a practice for embracing change. I often employ systems of chance as a method of circumventing power structures, fixed patterns, taste-based choices, and predictability. Playing the game and following the invented rules becomes a liberating experience for the participant.
My work has clear antecedents in Dada, Fluxus, Conceptual Art, and New Genre Performance Art. The early foundation of my art practice is rooted in the San Francisco Bay Area in the early 2000’s, when the tech boom and participatory art practices were building momentum. My exploration of this intersection was integral to the development of Net Art and Social Practice.
Within the last five years, I have created works on paper, interactive installations, theater, music compositions, video documentary, printed publications, performance, public intervention, and social media web projects. I also collaborate across disciplines, working with actors, artists, technologists, activists, ecologists, writers, musicians, local businesses, curators, chess players, and communities.
I often create instructional scores that invite participation into the production of the work. These scores are intentionally designed to create active, not passive, participants. I facilitate and direct the process, while the open frameworks invite people to respond in their own ways, thus celebrating variation, diversity, and play.
The thread that connects all my work is an examination of what it means to be human in a digital, media-saturated society. As our relationships to one another become increasingly mediated through screens, our values, ethics, educational systems, and political positions become increasingly categorized.
Through my art, I question this physical/digital gap. For some work, I create experiences that are in direct contact with the physical world, such as drawing on paper, walking across a city, or group conversation. In other works, I use media as space for performance, or to facilitate participation with various publics, such as museum visitors, non-art audiences and local communities. In all cases, the work is consciously created with our digital environment in mind and explores the grey area between the artificial and the real.
As a practice, I hope my work can draw attention to the seemingly unspectacular. I am invested in art as a daily practice that can heighten one’s awareness and help us appreciate the aesthetics of everyday moments. I envision my art practice as a contribution to a team effort in which we author our own stories, produce our own meaning, and celebrate the things we ultimately value.