Lee Walton

American, b. 1974

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Lee Walton earned his MFA from the California College of Arts in 2000 after receiving his BFA from San Jose State University. Walton studied with Master Printers at Crown Point Press in San Francisco, where he later became a professional printmaker from 1999-2001.

For over ten years, Walton has lectured, delivered artist talks, facilitated workshops, and participated in panel discussions. Topics have ranged experiential art, social media, public engagement, psychogeography, and play. Selected invitations include Carnegie Mellon, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Portland State University, Parsons, The New School For Art and Design, Art Institute of Boston, Sarah Lawrence College, Haverford College, Maryland Institute College of Art, The Kitchen (NY), University of Ulster (Belfast, Ireland), San Francisco State University, San Francisco Art Institute, and Emory University.

Most recently, Walton was nominated for both a Teaching Excellence Award (2013) and the Betty Cone Medal of Arts Award (2011) in the College of Arts & Sciences, UNCG. In collaboration with Jon Rubin, he received a Year in Review Awards (2011), by Americans for the Arts for top 50 most outstanding public art projects of the year. In 2007, Walton was a selected artist from 100 Years of California College of the Arts. In 2006, Walton received the S.J. Truman Award at the National Academy Museum in New York, NY, as well as The Bartlebooth Award from The Art Newspaper (London, UK). As an MFA student, Walton was granted the Top Studio Award from the California College of the Arts, San Francisco, CA and received a one-year residency at the Headlands Center for the Arts, Marin.

Since 2000, Walton has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions both nationally and internationally. Notable solo-exhibitions venues include Kraushaar Galleries (New York, NY), Olson Gallery, Bethel University, (Saint Paul, MN), RAYGUN LAB (Toowoomba, Australia), Crisp-Ellert Art Museum (St. Augustine, Florida), and 667 Shotwell (San Francisco, CA).

Group exhibitions include: More Love: Art, Politics, and Sharing Since the 1990s Ackland Art Museum, The University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill, NC); Liquid Light: Watercolors from the KMA Collection Knoxville Museum of Art (Knoxville, TN); Hotel Maria Kapel (Hoorn, Netherlands); Eyebeam (New York, NY); Haskins Laboratory at the Yale Research Center (New Haven, CT); The Power Plant (Toronto, Canada); Schroeder Romero Gallery (New York, NY); The City Museum of Ljubljana (Ljubljana, Slovenia); Naples Museum of Art (Naples, Florida); Artists Space (New York, NY); Columbus Museum, (Columbus, Georgia); Telfair Museum of Art, (Savannah, Georgia); Knoxville Museum of Art (Knoxville, Tennessee); Oakland Museum of California (Oakland, CA); Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery (New York, NY); Island #6 Art Center (Shanghai, China); National Academy Museum (New York, NY); and White Columns (New York, NY).

Lee Walton is recognized as one of the first artists to create web-based participatory art works. As early as 2001, Walton's interactive web project Red Ball: San Francisco explored social media, daily video logging (now know as vlogging), and online voting. Other projects that utilize the social aspects of the web include One Shot A Day (2003), Free Throw Competition with Shaquille O'Neal (2005), Wappenings (2005-present), and F'Book, What My Friends Are Doing On Facebook (2009).

Lee Walton's projects have been written about extensively through a variety of media channels. From the New York Times, Art Fag City, Art News, SF MOMA, Art Forum, Monopol Magazine (Berlin) and Rhizome. Walton's work and writings have also been part of book and catalogue publications such as "Mapping: A Critical Introduction to Cartography and GIS," by Jeremy W. Crampton (Blackwell Publishing); "Net Works: Case Studies of Web Projects," by Xtine Burrough (Routledge); "More Love: Art, Politics, and Sharing since the 1990s," by Claire Schneider; and "Walking and Mapping: Artists as Cartographers," by Karen O'Rourke (MIT Press).

Currently, Walton is an Associate Professor of Art and the Exhibition Director of The Gatewood Gallery at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Walton has developed new courses into the undergraduate and graduate curriculum that introduce participatory art and social practice, leading to the development of a concentration in Social Practice in the MFA program. In 2010, Walton and community activist Donovan McKnight created the Super G Experiential Residency Program, in Greensboro, NC, a nationally competitive program located inside an international food mart. In 2009, Walton co-curated with Xandra Eden the international exhibition "Our Subject Is You" at the Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC. Additionally, Walton has served as a curatorial advisor for Flux Factory and Art in General, both in New York.

Selected Public Collections

Martin Z. Margulies Warehouse, Miami, Florida; Hood Museum, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire; Knoxville Museum of Art, Knoxville, Tennessee; The Columbus Museum, Columbus, Georgia; Reykjavik Art Museum, Reykjavik, Iceland; Arkansas Arts Center, Little Rock, Arkansas; Deutsche Bank, New York; Jeannene Przyblyski, S.F.B.U.S., Permanent Collection and Archive; California College of Arts, San Francisco; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The First Annual Printable Principles of Dialogue Print Portfolio, New York.