Mike Calway-Fagen is an artist, writer, and curator who joins the Dodd faculty this year as Assistant Professor with teaching focus in the sculpture area. His research interests are imbedded in vital materialism and the relational capacity of sculpture. These include post-humanism, affect theory, the ineffable and sublime, the uncanny, authenticity and identity, queer theory, intersectionality, permanence, entropy, empathy, and the humility of the hysterical and humorous body. Collaboration plays a big role in Calway-Fagen's practice(s) having in the past worked with sound technicians, dancers, writers, radio personalities, airplane pilots, children’s choirs, cognitive scientists, architects, linguists, landscape designers, Norma (his Mom) and a host of others from divergent fields. 

Calway-Fagen came to Athens after three years at the Univeristy of Indiana Bloomington where he was Visiting Assistant Professor of Sculpture and Critical Thinking. He received his BFA from the University of Tennessee and an MFA from the University of California, San Diego, and also attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. In the past year Calway-Fagen opened solo exhibitions at Ditch Projects in Oregon, Lipscomb University in Tennessee, and a two-person project at the Soo Visual Arts Center in Minneapolis. Recent group exhibitions at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, LAXArt in Los Angeles, and NurtureArt in Brooklyn. Mike has attended residencies at The Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA, and Sculpture Space in Utica, NY. In past years Mike has lectured at a number of institutions including Universities of California, Tennessee, Oregon, Cincinnati, Alabama, Florida and Nevada; The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Bowdoin College, The Minneapolis College of Art and Design, and others. His work has been reviewed in Art Papers, World Sculpture magazine, Art F City, and is the focus of a chapter in a soon-to-be-published book by Elizabeth Sutton, The Phenomenology of Art and Animals (Routledge Press). His recent curatorial projects include Sounds Like, State Park and First Person in Indianapolis, IN, San Diego, CA and Nashville, TN respectively. His upcoming curatorial project, Blue in the face opens this Spring in Gainesville, FL at Gallery Protocol. 

Calway-Fagen’s essays and reviews can be found in the publication, Number magazine and online platforms, Temporary Art Review and BurnAway. His solo show, Banana Strings, opens at the University of Las Vegas, Nevada this Fall.