What is the role of art in the rehabilitation of prisoners? JD McGuire, a lecturer in art and design at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire – Barron County, taught for two years at six New Jersey state penitentiaries as part of the New Jersey Scholarship and Transformative Education in Prisons program. His students created themed drawings, either individually or collaboratively, on a weekly basis.
McGuire is the featured speaker for the Feb. 29 Thursdays at the U lecture at UW-Eau Claire – Barron County. The presentation will be from 12:30-1:30 p.m. in the Blue Hills Lecture Hall in Ritzinger Hall and will be livestreamed at ricelaketv.com.
McGuire will speak about his “Unsolicited Activities” artwork series and then lead into a presentation of works made with the incarcerated college students. He also will discuss the effects of incarceration on a person.
McGuire received a bachelor of fine arts in painting from the Kansas City Art Institute in 2002 and a master of fine arts in visual arts from Rutgers University in 2009. In addition to his teaching in New Jersey, he has taught at the college level in Pennsylvania, Missouri and Kansas.
Like many Wisconsinites, he enjoys fishing and kayaking. He spends summers with his partner, a cat and dog on a 500-acre cattle farm adjacent to the Osage Fork River in Laclede County, Missouri, near the town where he was born.
The Thursdays at the U weekly series is free and open to the public thanks to support from the UW-Eau Claire – Barron County Foundation. Neither seating reservations nor parking permits are needed for campus guests. In addition to the livestream option, the recordings are archived on the Thursdays at the U webpage.
The next lecture in the series will be March 7, with Lauren Finch presenting “Crex Meadows Wildlife Area.”
For more information, call the campus at 715-788-6244 or email Dr. Linda Tollefsrud, the series organizer, at tollefla@uwec.edu.
