The UCCS Visiting Artists & Critics Series features a lineup of presentations by artists and critics of national and international significance. The program’s goal is to foster understanding and appreciation of contemporary art through dialogue and critical conversations. Each VACS lecture takes place in the Chapman Foundation Recital Hall, next door to the Marie Walsh Sharpe Gallery in the Ent Center for the Arts. High-quality video recordings of each lecture are made public and archived on GOCA’s digital content platform within two weeks of each event (GOCAdigital.org).

Over the past decade, the series co-produced by the UCCS Galleries of Contemporary Art and UCCS Visual Art & Art History programs has invited artists and scholars to the UCCS campus to present public lectures and meet with undergraduate students in classes and workshop settings.

2026-2027 EVENTS

Friday, June 26th, 2026, 6 - 7 p.m.

Chapman Recital Hall, Ent Center for the Arts

Join us for a very exciting summer VACS with Simulacra artist, Etsuko Ichikawa! Etsuko Ichikawa is a Tokyo-born artist with an international practice spanning installation, sculpture, drawing, film, and performance. She received her BFA from Tokyo Zokei University in 1987, attended Pilchuck Glass School in 1993, and soon after relocated to the United States. After eight years as a studio assistant to Dale Chihuly, she established her independent practice in 2003.

Describing her work as “visual poetry,” Ichikawa explores memory, perception, and the fragile relationship between human experience and the natural world. She is recognized for her Glass Pyrograph series, in which she uses molten glass and fire as a drawing medium, merging gesture, material transformation, and temporality.

Her work has been exhibited internationally at institutions including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Seattle Art Museum; and the Ueno Royal Museum, Tokyo, and is held in the permanent collections of the Toledo Museum of Art; the Eretz Israel Museum, Tel Aviv; the Oriental Museum at Durham University; and the Museum of Glass, Tacoma.

She has received support from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation and the Artist Trust Arts Innovator Award. Her exhibition NACHI was supported by the Andy Warhol Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Recent projects expand her practice into immersive installations, incorporating light, glass, and moving image to reflect on ecological urgency, spiritual perception, and the lasting impact of human intervention in the environment.

Thursday, September 3, 2026, 6 - 7 p.m.

Chapman Recital Hall, Ent Center for the Arts

Join us for our first Fall VACS with Simulacra artist, Dornith Doherty!  A Guggenheim Foundation Fellow and Fulbright Scholar, Dornith Doherty is an artist working primarily with photography, video, and scientific imaging. In projects that interweave the evidentiary and metaphoric powers of photographic images, Doherty illuminates ecological and philosophical issues that are often neglected when considering human entanglements in the environment.

Doherty received her MFA in Photography from Yale University and serves as Distinguished Research Professor at the University of North Texas. She is represented by Moody Gallery, Houston. Her work is held in numerous public and private collections and has been exhibited widely in the US and abroad, including solo exhibitions at the National Academy of Sciences and the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, among others. Curated group exhibitions have been presented at the Denver Museum of Art, the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, the Royal Albert Memorial Museum in England, the Broad Museum in Michigan, and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. Her honors include grants from the Fulbright Foundation, the Japan Foundation, and the United States Department of the Interior, as well as artist residencies at the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto/Ontario Science Centre, the Cary Institute for Ecosystem Studies, and Joshua Tree National Park. She was named 2016 Texas State Artist of the Year and received an Honored Educator Award and 2025 Insight Award from the Society for Photographic Education. She was awarded Eminent Professor at UNT in 2026.