Patrick Earl Hammie will discuss his recent project, Significant Other, at 7 p.m. Thursday, March 6, in Room 116 of Art Building West on the University of Iowa campus. The free, public event is sponsored by the UI School of Art and Art History.

Significant Other presents a female and a male figure locked in a physical dialogue, hefting weight, and relocating the perceptions of ruined and objectified bodies that recall and carry on complex legacies of suffering and struggle. Informed by historical representations of Otherness, and recent shifts that locate women and people of color as central influencers of culture and politics, this series reorients inherited expectations and makes room for these bodies to populate new stations.

Hammie is an artist best known for his monumental portraits related primarily to themes of identity, history, and narrative. He received a Bachelor of Arts from Coker College and a Master of Fine Arts in painting from the University of Connecticut. In 2008, he received the Alice C. Cole ’42 Fellowship through Wellesley College, where he was an artist-in-residence for one year. In 2011, he was an artist-in-residence at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center.

His work is in several public collections including the Kohler Company, the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University, and the William Benton Museum of Art. He has received awards from the Tanne Foundation and Artist Alliance Communities with the Joyce Foundation. Reproductions of images from Significant Other are scheduled to appear this year in Harvard University’s Transition Magazine, an international publication about race and culture with an emphasis on the African Diaspora, edited by Henry Louis Gates Jr.

Hammie is an assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he instructs all levels of painting and drawing and leads graduate seminars.

The School of Art and Art History is part of the UI College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

Individuals with disabilities are encouraged to attend all University of Iowa-sponsored events. If you are a person with a disability who requires a reasonable accommodation in order to participate in this program, contact the School of Art and Art History in advance at 319-335-1376.