Alumni Michael K. Paxton (1979) was recently featured in a film which aired on PBS West Virginia on June 14, 2020. 

Work At Hand chronicles the life and work of Paxton. From his humble beginnings in the hills of West Virginia to his time as an art student at Marshall University in the gritty, industrial town of Huntington, to graduate school at the University of Georgia, Athens. During the heady heyday of the emerging scene of punk music, theater and performance art, and the era of bands like R.E.M., The B-52’s, and Pylon, Michael dove into the mosh pit of experimentation and free expression while working jobs at factories, on the railroad, and as a newspaper printer. Later, his battle to overcome stage 4 cancer would become an integral part of his story and a testimony to a sense of urgency and empathy in his paintings. Michael's working-class, Appalachian roots continue to inform his art today. As a sixth generation West Virginian from the besieged coalfields of deepest Appalachia, the film represents a homecoming.

Michael K. Paxton is a sixth generation West Virginian and Chicago based artist. He has been an adjunct faculty member of Columbia College, Chicago since 2005. Paxton earned his BA in Art from Marshall University, 1975 and his MFA in Drawing and Painting from The University of Georgia, 1979. Notable awards include grants from the Adolph & Esther Gottlieb Foundation, Inc., New York; Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Visual Art Award and many Professional Development Grants. He has been a Visiting Artist and Artist in Residence with numerous Universities and Art Centers over is forty-five- year career. “Work at Hand, Michael K. Paxton” was an Official Selection of the 17th Annual Great Lakes International Film Festival.

Selected major one-person exhibitions include the forthcoming exhibition with the Evanston Art Center; the recent Raw Reckoning, Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art, Chicago and Pillars of Dust, Heuser Art Center, Bradley University, Peoria, IL. Others include Miami University Museum of Art, Oxford, Ohio; Chicago Cultural Center, Chicago, IL; Linda Matney Gallery, Williamsburg, VA.; Linda Warren Projects, Chicago, IL; Laura Mesaros Gallery, West Virginia University among many others.

A few of his major commissions are with the 7th District Federal Reserve Bank, Chicago; Christel De Haan Collection, Zionsville, IN; Jensen Metal, Inc. in Racine, WI, and a wall-size drawing installed into the Kirkland and Ellis collection in San Francisco. He has also been published in New American Paintings; featured artist/educator in issue 8 of Line Work; been the subject of both radio and television features on NPR, Chicago and WVPBS and honored to have been selected and published in Art and Soul, that highlighting fifty of the most noted West Virginians in the Arts.