Beauvais Lyons is a Chancellor’s Professor at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville where he has taught printmaking since 1985. Lyons received his MFA degree from Arizona State University in 1983 and his BFA degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1980. See his web site (volweb.utk.edu/~blyons) for information on his mock-academic projects through the Hokes Archives. Lyons’ one-person exhibitions have been presented at over 80 museums and galleries in the United States and abroad. His prints are in numerous public collections including the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Washington, DC; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia. PA. In 2002 he received a Fulbright Fellowship to teach at the Fine Arts Academy in Poznañ, Poland. In 2014 he received the Santo Foundation Artist Award, and in 2017 he received the SECAC Excellence in Teaching Award.

"For the past four decades my studio work has explored various forms of parafiction, fabricating and documenting imaginary worlds. My subjects have included archaeology, folk art, medicine, zoology, a circus, and always include various forms of biography. Prints are central to much of my work, as printed culture is central to science and history."

Anne Hermosilla was raised in Panama City, Panama, and moved to the United States to study art at Transylvania University. She is currently living and working as a freelance artist in Virginia. The illustrations seen here were done for the book Under the Ocelot Sun / Bajo el sol del Ocelote written by Transylvania University Professor of Spanish Dr. Jeremy Paden

Under the Ocelot Sun / Bajo el sol del Ocelote

Under the Ocelot Sun is a powerful account of refugees' plight lyrically told (in English and Spanish) and vibrantly illustrated. A mother tells her young daughter of their Honduran homeland and heritage and why they have taken this perilous journey to walk to the US border in search of asylum. Under the Ocelot Sun is a story of hope and survival in times of trouble.

Born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri, Chris Usher graduated from Indiana University with a degree in Journalism. Usher spent several years as a newspaper photographer before going freelance and moving to Washington, DC in 1990.

Usher’s photojournalism work appeared regularly in domestic and international publications for more than three decades. He is the recipient of numerous domestic and international awards, including an Eisenstaedt Award (2000) for his unique and controversial depiction of President Clinton's post-acquittal speech. In 2005, Usher's Behind the Velvet Rope, a collection of behind-the-scenes images shot with a Leica while covering the President of the United States, became a traveling exhibition and book. In 2008, he self-published One of Us, selects from his documentation of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. The project exhibit opened at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC in 2008. Since 2009, Usher has been the still photographer for CBS' Face the Nation.

When Usher isn't on assignment or at CBS' studios, he can be found at Bokeh Ridge Farm, in the panhandle of West Virginia, with his wife Adrienne, their seven rescue cats, three retired ponies and a one-eyed mini donkey. If he's not on the tractor, he's probably in the dark room, processing large format photography, the old-fashioned way.

David Wischer was born in Henderson, Kentucky. He received his B.F.A. in Graphic Design from Northern Kentucky University and his M.F.A. in Fine Art from Purdue University. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Digital and Print Media at University of Kentucky. His work has recently been exhibited at the Center for Book Arts in New York, Thunder-Sky in Cincinnati, the Four Rivers Print Biennial at Southern Illinois University, and International Print Center New York.

"My work is heavily influenced by my personal daily observations of The Absurd. Television, the internet, current events, and technology are a constant source of inspiration for me. I use the senselessness of daily life as a foundation for a humorous dialogue with the viewer. Through my use of digital art, printmaking, drawing, photography, and animation, I meld topical humor, social commentary, nostalgia, and parody in my work, which functions as an inside joke for a generation of adults who grew up absorbing their knowledge through television and the internet.

Much of my artwork is built around appropriated images which may be familiar to the viewer. This recognition becomes the set-up to my visual punch line. The laws of visual art are much like the laws of literature. Through our own experiences in life, we are trained to understand certain conventional constructions of images. The changes I make in imagery propel the absurdity of the original subject into the area of nonsense by breaching those syntactic rules, surprising and amusing the viewer. One might find the images I create to be preposterous, but they are firmly planted in realities drawn from incongruous sources. And with this syntactical rupture, a new exaggerated reality is formed and the viewer can now reflect on the absurdity of the original untouched situation.

Because a lot of my work is inspired by nostalgia, the viewer recognition may be generational or regional. Some viewers may understand part of an image but not fully understand how it relates to other parts. This public and private humor mirrors our own encounter with images in popular culture and the media that we see every day. With each confused viewer of my work, there is someone who feels like they are on the inside of my private joke."

Sharon has been a professional photojournalist and exhibition photographer for more than 40 years, shooting news stories, political campaigns, cultural events, conferences, and portraits. Most notably, Farmer was the first African-American woman to be hired as a White House photographer, as well as the first African American and first woman to become Director of the White House Photography office. She served as Director of the White House Photography Office from 1999-2001, and as White House photographer from 1993, documenting the beginning of the Clinton-Gore Administration.

Formerly an assignment editor for the Associated Press, she was part of the AP team in 2003 that covered the Super Bowl in San Diego, California. She was also the campaign photographer for Sen. John Kerry’s presidential election campaign in 2004. Over the years she has photographed for The Washington Post, the Smithsonian Institution, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the National Urban League, the Brookings Institution, and Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. to name a few.

Farmer has taught and lectured extensively on photography and photojournalism at the National Archives, American University, the Smithsonian Institution, Mount Vernon College, the National Geographic Society, Eddie Adams Workshop, the Women in Photojournalism Conference, Western Kentucky University, Indiana University; Louisville, Kentucky’s Frazier Museum, University of Miami, the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ), and the History Makers education series.

Her photographic work resides in the collections of the Clinton Presidential Library, the National Archives, the Library of Congress, Howard University’s Moreland-Spingarn Collection, the District of Columbia Government; the Anacostia Museum and the National Museum of African American History & Culture of the Smithsonian Institution; the King Arts Complex in Columbus, Ohio, the South African Museum in Pretoria and in private collections.

Sharon Farmer majored in photography and minored in music at Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio, where she received her Bachelor of Arts degree.