The McKinney Visiting Artist Series kicks off its 2025-26 season with a panel discussion among three artists who have been guests of the series over the past decade and whose artwork is on view in the Grunwald Gallery in the exhibition "Re:Visit | Celebrating a Decade of McKinney Visiting Artists": Cappy Counard, Yvonne Osei, and Martin Venezky. During the moderated panel, the artists will discuss their practice, the contemporary art world, and the role of the university-based artist residency.
About the artists:
Cappy Counard, on the faculty of Edinboro University in Pennsylvania, makes jewelry and small sculpture from an eclectic mix of precious and distressed metals, gems, wood, and other organic materials. Her work, which “reflect[s] her curiosity about relationship,” has been featured in numerous exhibitions and publications and belongs to collections across the U.S.
Yvonne Osei is a US-based Ghanaian artist whose multi-disciplinary practice explores beauty, colorism, the politics of clothing and the impact of global trade and colonialism. Osei, who is the subject of a Kehinde Wiley portrait, has referred to herself as an “outdoor artist” who invites engagement from passersby when she exhibits or performs. She is represented by the Bruno David Gallery in Saint Louis.
Martin Venezky, an artist and designer known to explore the potential within salvaged materials and hand-based processes, has been on the faculty of RISD, CalArts, and California College of the Arts; and his work belongs to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. He will be installing a new photographic work at the Grunwald Gallery during the prior week.
Read more about the exhibition in this press release.