Artists Walkthroughs: Tilke Elkins, Karen Yank, and Cara Despain
Thursday, June 22nd 2023, 3-5pm
UAM Galleries
     Tilke Elkins from 3:00–3:30pm
     Karen Yank from 3:45–4:15pm 
     Cara Despain from 4:30–5:00pm

Join artists Elkins, Yank, and Despain for a walkthrough of the UAM’s three new exhibitions prior to the opening reception. Curator Tilke Elkins will offer insight into the artwork and artists of Wild Pigment Project in the Mullennix Bridge Gallery. Sculptor Karen Yank will discuss her decades-long friendship with artist Agnes Martin and the importance of Martin’s role as an artistic mentor in Agnes Martin and Karen Yank: Meditations on Mentor and Student in the Bunny Conlon Modern & Contemporary Art Gallery. Artist Cara Despain will talk about her site-specific, research-based practice explored in Specter in the Contemporary Gallery. Please plan to stay for the opening reception from 5:30–7:30pm.

Tilke Elkins is an artist, writer, and curator based on Kalapuya territory/Oregon, focused on site-specific/responsive painting and social practice art. Tilke has worked with mineral and botanical pigments since 2007, and is the founding director of Wild Pigment Project, a collaborative initiative she established in 2019 to promote ecological balance and regenerative economies through a passion for wild pigments, their places of origin, and their cultural histories. 

Karen Yank received her MFA from Rutgers University and her BFA from the University of Wisconsin─Madison. Her sculptures are included in numerous museum and public collections, including the New Mexico Museum of Art, New Mexico State Capitol Art Collection, Albuquerque Museum, and the Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet in NYC. Yank has completed more than 50 public and private outdoor commissions across the US, including most recently being chosen for the Sunport Boulevard extension project in Albuquerque, NM. Yank was a 2022 Governor's Awards for Excellence in the Arts recipient.

Cara Despain is an artist working in film and video, sound, sculpture, photography, and installation. She holds a BFA from the University of Utah (2006). Her work is included in the Rubell Family and Scholl Collections, as well as the State of Utah, Salt Lake County, and Miami-Dade County and Miami International Airport art collections. Recent solo exhibitions include FROM DUST at the Southern Utah Museum of Art (2020–2021); In Memoriam: Carbon Paintings at the Kimball Art Center in Park City, UT (2021–2022); and Specter at the Bass Museum of Art in Miami Beach, FL. (2022). Despain currently splits her time between Salt Lake City, UT and Miami, FL.