Michael Rees and the International Sculpture Center, publisher of Sculpture magazine, are excited to present Ad Hoc, a virtual talk series. Join Michael Rees as he talks with special guests who work in art, technology, and sculpture.
In this episode, Michael is joined by artist and educator, John Craig Freeman. Join us every other week for more episodes! Make sure you like and subscribe to get updates on the International Sculpture Center.
Michael Rees is an artist working in themes of figuration, language, technology, and the social to weave a sculptural mélange. He received his BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute and his MFA from Yale University. He also won a Deutscher Akademischer Austaushdienst for undergraduate study at the Kunstakademie in Dusseldorf, Germany, with Joseph Beuys. Rees is currently professor of sculpture and digital media at William Paterson University, and Director of the Center for New Art there.
John Craig Freeman is a public artist with over twenty years of experience using emergent technologies to produce large-scale public work at sites where the forces of globalization are impacting the lives of individuals in local communities. His work seeks to expand the notion of public by exploring how digital networked technology is transforming our sense of place.
Freeman is a founding member of the international artists collective Manifest.AR and he has produced work and exhibited around the world including at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, FACT Liverpool, Kunsthallen Nikolaj Copenhagen, Triennale di Milano, the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Beijing, He has had work commissioned by the ZERO1, Rhizome.org and Turbulence.org. His work has been reviewed in The New York Times, El Pais, Liberation, Wired News, Artforum, Ten-8, Z Magazine, Afterimage, Photo Metro, New Art Examiner, Time, Harper's and Der Spiegel. Christiane Paul cites Freeman's work in her book Digital Art, as does Lucy Lippard in the Lure of the Local, and Margot Lovejoy in Digital Currents: Art in the Electronic Age.
His writing has been published in Rhizomes, Leonardo, the Journal of Visual Culture, and Exposure.
Freeman received a Bachelor of Art degree from the University of California, San Diego in 1986 and a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Colorado, Boulder in 1990. He is currently a Professor of New Media at Emerson College in Boston.
Freeman writes, “If Andy Warhol set out to create a distinctly American art form in the twentieth century, I identify with those who seek to create a distinctly global art form in the twenty-first.”
John Craig Freeman 
