Hite Art Institute presents lecture by famed public spaces artist

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Matthew Mazzotta, an artist who has won recent acclaim for using innovative art and architecture projects to transform public spaces, will give this year’s Frederic Lindley Morgan Lecture Dec. 10 in the University of Louisville’s Schneider Hall Galleries. In 2013, Mazzotta worked with the Coleman Center for the Arts in York, Alabama, on transforming a derelict property into an open-air theater. Using materials from an abandoned home, Mazzotta collaborated with locals to build “Open House,” which morphs from a cottage home into a 100-seat theater when its roof and walls fold down. The project drew widespread interest and won a number of awards in the design, art and architecture worlds. Mazzotta, who holds a master’s in visual studies from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is the second recipient of the Chamberlain Award offered by the Headlands Center for the Arts in San Francisco, where he is currently an artist-in-residence. He’s started a new project, Byway of Art, in which he will lead the creation of public artworks in four rural communities in Nebraska. He’s collaborated with a number of communities throughout the country in public art projects, saying his work “is about reversing the top-down, one-way exchange of ideas and allowing people to contribute in a more tangible way to their own environment.” His lecture, “Architecture of Social Space: Opening Spaces of Critique within the Places We Live” will be at 12:30 p.m. in Schneider Hall’s Gallery X. It is free and open to the public. For more information, contact Benjamin Hufbauer, associate professor of fine arts, at bghufb01@louisville.edu or 502-852-0442. ###