Gather on the third Thursday of the month for an offbeat art-fix or to learn a creative craft.  FREE with MFA admission, which is only $5 after 5p.m. on Thursdays.

Random Act 10.15.15 @ 6:30p.m.: Collaborative Practice features a panel discussion on printmaking and the commemorative MFA 50th anniversary prints by Elisabeth Condon and Jane Hammond in collaboration with Master Printer Erika Greenberg-Schneider.  Both Ms. Condon and Ms. Hammond have works in Marks Made and the Museum collection.

Born in Los Angeles, Elisabeth Condon now divides her time between Tampa and Brooklyn and has been influenced by Chinese scroll-painting, American postwar abstraction, and 1970s wallpaper patterns.  She is the recipient of the 2015 New York PULSE Prize, a Confucius Institute Understanding China Fellowship, a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, and a Florida Individual Artist Grant.  She has been artist-in-residence at the Swatch Art Peace Hotel in Shanghai and the Red Gate in Beijing, Grand Canyon National Park, and Yaddo in Saratoga Springs, New York.  Her work has been shown at the National Art Museum of China and the Songzhuang Museum in Beijing, the Shenghua Art Centre in Nanjing, 1285 Avenue of the Americas Art Gallery in New York, the Tampa Museum of Art, and the NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale, among others.  She is represented in the collections of the US Embassy in Beijing, the Swatch Art Peace Hotel, and JPMorgan Chase.  Ms. Condon holds her BFA from Otis Art Institute of Parsons School of Design and her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Erika Greenberg-Schneider lived and worked in France for 20 years, becoming a Master Printer of Intaglio and Lithography for Atelier Franck Bordas and then Director and Master Printer of the Gallery Maeght studios in Paris and St. Paul.  Upon returning to the United States in 1998, she became Master Printer of Intaglio as USF/Graphicstudio, as well as visiting professor in drawing and printmaking at the University of South Florida, Tampa.  She is currently Assistant Professor of Foundations for the Graphic Design Program as USF St. Petersburg.  In 2003, she opened Blue Acier, her internationally known print studio and gallery in Tampa.  She was elected Chevalier de l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the Republic of France in 2011 in recognition of her contributions to promoting French culture in Florida.

Jane Hammond, who lives and works in New York, is one of our country’s most multitalented artists.  After receiving her BA from Mount Holyoke College, she completed an MFA in ceramics at Arizona State University and another MFA in sculpture at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  She has pursued painting, printmaking, drawing, and photography, as well as sculpture, and has been inspired by the music and approach of experimental composer John Cage and especially by language.  She created 62 paintings based on titles suggested by poet John Ashbery and collaborated with poet Raphael Rubinstein on the sculpture Fallen for the Whitney Museum of American Art.  The latter was comprised of thousands of handmade leaves printed by Ms. Hammond and inscribed with the names of soldiers killed in the Iraq War.