Visual Voices: Buzz Spector

25 Aug Visual Voices: Buzz Spector

Buzz Spector: I stack things. I tear stuff up.

Buzz Spector is an artist and critical writer whose artwork has been shown in such museums as the Art Institute of Chicago, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, and the Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh, PA. Spector’s work makes frequent use of the book, both as subject and object, and is concerned with relationships between public history, individual memory, and perception. He has published a number of artists’ books and editions since the mid-1970s, including, most recently, Buzzwords, selected interviews with Spector and new page art, issued by Sara Ranchouse Publishing, Chicago, in 2012. Other Spector publications include White Insistence, a limited edition collaboration with poet Michael Burkhart self-published by the artist in 2009, and Time Square, a limited edition letterpress book hand altered by the artist and published in 2007 by Pyracantha Press and ABBA at Arizona State University in Tempe.

Spector was a co-founder of WhiteWalls, a magazine of writings by artists, in Chicago in 1978, and served as the publication’s editor until 1987. Since then he has written extensively on topics in contemporary art and culture, and has contributed reviews and essays to a number of publications, including American Craft, Artforum, Art Issues, Art on Paper, Exposure, and New Art Examiner. He is the author The Book Maker’s Desire, critical essays on topics in contemporary art and artists’ books (Umbrella Editions, 1995), and numerous exhibition catalogue essays including, most recently, N. Dash (White Flag Projects, 2013) and Luis Camnitzer: Forewords and Last Words (Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, 2011).

Spector received the Distinguished Teaching of Art Award from the College Art Association in 2013. Other recognition includes a 2005 New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA Fellowship), a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Fellowship in 1991, and National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship Awards in 1982, 1985, and 1991. He is professor of art in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis.