University of Virginia (UVA) Student Arts Board has organized a conversation with leading artist Ed Woodham to discuss his work, vision for the event and chosen focus of MATTER.

Art in Odd Places 2018: MATTER / Charlottesville invites local, regional and national artists to create social outreach, performances, and site-specific artworks around UVA and the Downtown Mall. Through different partnerships within the community, this year-long process invites public engagement, collaboration among artists, and dialogue that integrates relevant aesthetic and historical considerations.

Ed Woodham has been active in community art, education, and civic interventions across media and culture for over thirty-five years. A visual and performance artist, puppeteer, and curator, Woodham employs humor, irony, subtle detournement, and a striking visual style in order to encourage greater consideration of–and provoke deeper critical engagement with–the urban environment. Woodham created Art in Odd Places (AiOP) to present visual and performance art to reclaim public spaces in New York City and beyond. Art in Odd Places has been produced in Los Angeles CA, Boston MA, Indianapolis IN, Greensboro NC, and Orlando, FL in the U.S.; Saint Petersburg, Russia, and Sydney, Australia.

Woodham is on the faculty of Wilson College’s MFA program and teaches workshops in politically based public performances at NYU Hemispheric Institute for EMERGENYC and at School of Visual Arts in NYC for City as Site: Performance and Social Intervention. He was a 2013 Blade of Grass Fellow in Social Engagement. For summer 2014, Ed was selected for the drawing(shed) residency IdeasFromElse[W]here to create a performance work in Lloyd Park, East London. He was a featured speaker for TEDxGowanus and TEDxIndianapolis in 2014. For 2016 he was commissioned to create a socially engaged work for Jamaica FLUX at The Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning in Queens, NY and was awarded a commission by The Gowanus Public Arts Initiative to create The Keepers, in his longtime neighborhood of Gowanus, Brooklyn. In 2016-17, he was an artist-in-residence at the Department of Art, Appalachian State University in Boone, NC and a 2017 resident at Hambidge Arts Center in Rabun Gap, Georgia.

Woodham will be hosting artist talks on October 24th and 25th, both at 6pm. The talks will be held at Campbell Hall 160 on the 24th, and the Second Street Gallery on the 25th.