Renowned artist and activist Robert Shetterly will conduct classes at Transylvania Jan. 28-Feb. 1, give public lecture Jan. 30
LEXINGTON, Ky.—Renowned artist and activist Robert Shetterly, a Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow with the Council of Independent Colleges (CIC), will conduct classes and deliver a public lecture during an intensive week-long visit to Transylvania University, January 28-February 1. Shetterly’s lecture, “Truth, Courage, and the Spirit of Democracy,” is on Wednesday, Jan. 30, at 7:30 p.m. in Coleman Recital Hall in the Mitchell Fine Arts Center. It is free and open to the public. Shetterly taught himself drawing, printmaking and painting after attending Harvard University. For 12 years he illustrated the editorial page drawings for the Maine Times, the National Audubon Society’s children’s newspaper Audubon Adventures and more than 30 books. Now, his paintings and prints are in collections all over the U.S. and Europe. His painting tended toward the narrative and the surreal until 2002 when he began painting the series of portraits, numbering now over 120, called “Americans Who Tell the Truth.” The show has been exhibited in venues across more than 20 states, including university museums, grade school libraries, sandwich shops and the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in New York City. A book of portraits by the same name was published in 2005 and in 2006 won the top award of the International Reading Association for Intermediate Non-fiction. The portraits have given Shetterly an opportunity to speak with children and adults all over this country about sustainability, U.S. history, the necessity of dissent in a democracy