College of Visual and Performing Arts

Ghost choir art exhibition
2026-01-13 12:00 - 2026-01-24 17:00 (America/New_York) | Greensboro Project Space, 111 E February 1 Pl, Greensboro, NC 27406, USA
GHOST CHOIR

Solo Exhibition by Jason Lord

January 13-24, 2026

Reception: Friday, Jan 23rd | 6-8P

More About Ghost Choir

GHOST CHOIR is the convergence of a recurring image in my work and a studio practice that embraces the alter ego as generative disruption.

In the winter of 1996, in a moment of intense emotion, a sound came through me. What began as a wail became an emanation connecting the earth’s core, through me, to every star and planet. The sound was so old and so large I didn’t even try to claim it as my own, even as a self-centered 23-year-old. The sound was not from me, but it came through me, connecting me to everything and everyone, everywhere.

In and out of my studio, I experiment with rules. Sometimes I use alter egos–embodied sets of rules–to push or disrupt certain predictable outcomes in my work. Each of these personae have a visual language and a mode of operation. This work is four of these studio personae–Otto, Santiago, Tammy, and Njezan–making sense of the sound that came through me all those years ago, performing its song in four-part harmony, conducted by me.

More About Jason

Jason Lord is an interdisciplinary artist, designer, and educator working in the American South. He grew up in a working-class, Catholic family in rural Vermont, where he inherited the experimental resourcefulness of the small town tinker, inventing and building objects, images, and worlds out of humble materials

He utilizes an expansive toolbox of materials, processes, and strategies for thinking and making, engaging in rigorous conceptual, material, and procedural experimentation through drawing, installation, painting, print, sculpture, assemblage, book arts, social practice, music composition and performance, writing, sound, video, photography, and their many intersections.

Jason has been the recipient of a McColl Center Residency, a Vermont Studio Center Fellowship, the Windgate Distinguished Fellowship for Innovation in Craft from the Hambidge Center, a Winter Residency Fellowship at Penland School of Craft, a North Carolina Arts Council Artist Support Grant, a CERF+ Grant, a National Gallery of Art Teaching Fellowship, and residencies at the Peter Bullough Foundation, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, LEVEL Retreat, and Pocosin Arts. He has exhibited in numerous group and solo shows and taught classes and workshops to K-12 students, undergraduates, and adult learners in schools, museums, and art centers. He holds a BFA in Studio Art from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and an MFA in Studio Arts from the University of North Carolina-Greensboro.

Artist Statement

My work begins with close looking. I am drawn to the small, often overlooked moments where material, environment, and perception meet—shifts in light, the accumulation of marks, the fragile edges where one form becomes another. These moments become the raw material for a practice that moves between drawing, sculpture, installation, and other time-based processes. Across these modes, I explore the relationship between parts and wholes, the mutability of the self, and the ways identity is shaped by instability, memory, and environment.

I often build systems that underscore possibility and invite change: modular structures that reconfigure with each installation, drawings composed of repeated gestures that evolve over days or weeks, and cyanotypes or cast forms shaped by weather, light, or erosion. I investigate how meaning gathers over time, how fragments communicate with one another, and how an artwork can become a living record of attention.

Environmental and human ecologies inform much of my current research. I treat the studio, the field, and the classroom as interconnected sites of observation and experimentation. Small, everyday phenomena—shadow patterns in winter light, weather-worn surfaces, discarded fragments—become openings into larger questions about presence, change, and the construction of meaning. In this sense, my work is as much an inquiry into perception and attention as it is a material practice.

Ultimately, I aim to make work that activates curiosity and invites viewers to slow down and notice how the world is built: not all at once, but bit by bit, through relationships among parts, and through moments of fluctuation and renewal.

What Remains...
2026-01-23 09:00 - 16:00 | UNCG Gatewood Studio Arts Building, 527 Highland Ave, Greensboro, NC, United States
Ann Marie Kennedy is an artist and papermaker based in Raleigh, NC. In her installations and works on paper, she uses natural materials to create narratives about human connections and experiences. She is an Associate Professor of Studio Art at Wake Tech Community College and a former resident artist at Penland School of Craft. She has also been an artist in residence at Headlands (CA), Morgan Conservatory (OH), and Women’s Studio Workshop (NY). She teaches workshops in hand papermaking and participates in many exhibits both locally and nationally. Ann Marie’s installations, prints, and works of paper have been exhibited both nationally and regionally.The Artist Talk and reception is January 22nd from 4:00pm – 6:00pm

https://annmariekennedy.net/home.html

Ciompi Quartet
2026-01-23 19:30 - 21:00 | Tew Recital Hall, 100 McIver St, Greensboro, 27412, United States
https://youtube.com/live/m48h7rfFV2A?feature=share

Premiere performances of works by Duke and UNCG graduate composers

For the sixth year, the Ciompi has commissioned current Duke graduate composers to write short string quartet movements. This year we will also include works by three graduate composers at the University of North Carolina Greensboro. These premiere performances provide a chance to meet the next generation of composers and experience music on the cutting edge.

Graduate Student Composers

Erich Barganier – DukeAlly Harvel – UNC GreensboroRonja Mokráňová – DukeClem Pearson – UNC GreensboroJacob Smith – UNC Greensboro

About the Artists

Since its founding in 1965 by the renowned Italian violinist Giorgio Ciompi, the Ciompi Quartet of Duke University has delighted audiences and impressed critics around the world. In a career that spans five continents and includes many hundreds of concerts, the Ciompi Quartet has developed a reputation for performances of real intelligence and musical sophistication, with a warm, unified sound that allows each player’s individual voice to emerge.

In recent years, the Ciompi Quartet has performed across the U.S. from Washington State to California, Texas, New York, Washington DC and New England, and abroad from China and Taiwan to France, Italy, Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic, Serbia and Albania. In June 2024 the Quartet performed in Vienna at a celebration of that composer’s 150th anniversary sponsored by the Arnold Schoenberg Center. The Quartet has performed at the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival in Detroit, North Carolina’s Eastern Music Festival and Highlands Chamber Music Festival, and at Monadnock Music in New Hampshire.

The Ciompi Quartet’s commitment to creative programming often mixes the old and the brand new in exciting ways. Most recently, the quartet engaged composers Alan Chan and Andrew Waggoner to write new works for string quartet and pipa, in a collaboration with pipa player Min Xiao-Fen called “An American in Shanghai: Forgotten Stories.”

Its extensive catalog of commissions includes many that the group continues to perform on tour. Close ties to composers such as Paul Schoenfield, Stephen Jaffe, Scott Lindroth, and Melinda Wagner have produced important contributions to the repertoire; the quartet recently premiered Stephen Jaffe’s Third String Quartet and two new quintets by Lindroth: “Schley Road” for quartet and saxophone, and his Cello Quintet. A recording of recent commissions will appear on the New Focus label in 2025. Other recent recordings are on Toccata Classics (a quartet by 19th century violin virtuoso Heinrich Ernst), and Naxos, which released “Journey to the West” by Chiayu Hsu; also on Naxos online is a recording of the quartets of Paul Schoenfield, including the popular “Tales from Chelm.” Numerous other discs are on the CRI, Arabesque, Albany, Gasparo, and Sheffield Lab labels.

All the Ciompi Quartet members are Professors at Duke, where they lead the string studios and chamber music program and perform across campus in traditional and non-traditional venues.

Ciompi Quartet

The Portfolio Project
The Ciompi Quartet Portfolio Project began in the summer of 2020 as a way for the Quartet to engage with composers in Duke Music’s graduate program during the COVID-19 pandemic, when live performances were curtailed and composers and performers needed creative outlets for their music. Portfolio Project 2020 was presented by Duke Music’s Best of Biddle virtual series, with the video receiving hundreds of views since its premiere.

The success of the initial project inspired the Ciompi Quartet to continue the Portfolio Project in the summers of 2021 and 2022. Read more about the composers and hear recorded performances at the links below.

Learn More About the Portfolio Project

Event Details

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