“I’m an out-by-myself-in-the-middle-of-nowhere person,” says Kelly Knight (MFA ‘18), who returned to MassArt as the director of the low-residency MFA program in January 2024. 

How does she reconcile that with the fact that she lives smack in the middle of a city? That’s part of what she’s going to talk about when she kicks off this year’s MFA Summer Lecture Series on Thurs., July 11, at MassArt’s Design and Media Center (DMC) Lecture Hall. 

Knight, a multimedia artist who has exhibited at venues such as the Farm Projects Gallery in Wellfleet, the Art Complex Museum in Duxbury, and the Brickbottom Gallery in Somerville, is currently working on a new set of figures she says are “in female form, but not people, really. I think they’re ancestors or guides or other entities. We have a vacant lot next to our house that we’re trying to turn into a habitat for wildlife, and these characters [in mixed media that include catalog pages, cardboard packaging, and other repurposed materials] come out after I’ve been doing a lot of physical work in that space. I think they’re messengers, or maybe guardians.”  

The kickoff lecture series serves as Knight’s reintroduction  to the MassArt community. The series includes artists working in  a mix of themes and media, which Knight “ balanced with racial and gender diversity “so that it’s inclusive and reflective of our student body,” she says.  Additional lecture series speakers include: Falaks Vasa (July 18 at 4:30 p.m.), Jasmine Chen (July 19 at 6:30 p.m.), and Hannah Brancato (July 25 at 4:30 p.m.).

All lectures are free, open to the broader MassArt community and the public, and presented in-person. For more information about the MFA summer lecture series, visit the MassArt Events Calendar.