Artists, writers and assemblers of elaborate model-railroad dioramas know that the best way to kindle the fires of creative inspiration is to listen to a lecture by someone in the appropriate field and then slavishly copy that person. So the Current Perspectives lecture series at the Kansas City Art Institute offers periodic microbursts of inspiration to completely blow the house of your creative block off the concrete foundation of your mind, leaving you huddled in a sheltering basement of self-actualization. Printmaker Matthew Hopson-Walker, a teacher of printmaking at the College of the Sequoias and California State University-Fresno, makes prints with the traditional beauty and appeal of the form, but with occasionally disturbing twists. Animals and cloudscapes occupy fields of repeating patterns and decorative flourishes, cartoon characters leer from the skies, and cultural detritus exists alongside lovingly rendered wildlife. Hopson-Walker gives a 7 p.m. talk at Epperson Auditorium in Vanderslice Hall, on the KCAI campus (4415 Warwick, 800-522-5224). The lecture is free and open to the public.— Chris Packham
Thu., Sept. 9, 7 p.m., 2010
