Kori Newkirk has been announced as the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Department of Art and Art History’s 2007 Jack Drake Visiting Artist in a recent press release. The Bronx, NY native will deliver a lecture as part of his five-day visit to the university’s Southside campus. It will take place at 6 p.m. on September 27; it’s free and open to the public.

Click here for directions courtesy of our calendar.

Newkirk makes “multimedia paintings, sculptural installations and photographs that explore the formal properties of materials, the politics of identity and the artist’s personal history” according to the release. He’s known for using pomade and plastic pony beads, both used to style black hair, as well as for his use the color white, with its connotations of race and pristine environments.

Click here to learn more about work by Newkirk that was included in the Whitney Museum of American Art’s 2006 Biennial, including hearing from the artist himself via podcast.

He now lives in Los Angeles, having received his bachelor of fine arts degree from the School of Art Institute of Chicago and his master of fine arts degree as a Chancellor’s Fellow at the University of California at Irvine.

For more information, call the department at 205-934-4941.