BORN IN 1971, Michael David Wickerson, tenured Associate Professor and Chair of the Sculpture Department at the Kansas City Art Institute, teaches a variety of traditional and contemporary skills and crafts.
Wickerson is a Canadian artist working in Kansas City, experienced in woodworking and metal casting. He has exhibited throughout North America since 1994 and has displayed artworks overseas in Holland since 2008. Currently, he has completed two adobe and rammed earth buildings at Wickerson Studios located on his 11-acre property in Kansas City, Kansas: Hamlet's Mill and the Grieve Foundry.
Wickerson Studios is a 'state' created from the clay of the earth and the timber of the fallen trees. Sunlight is the only light that is ever provided. The winds and rains penetrate the privacy of these two special places. Everything is seasonal. The summer sun exhausts and the winter chill bites. It is easy to feel alive in this place.
In 2005, his installation, This Equipment Belongs to the Earth, was displayed at the Leedy-Voulkos Art Center in Kansas City and his aluminum casting, House of the Sun, was recognized in Spaces Magazine in the spring of 2006. In 2007, Wickerson received a Lighton International Exchange Grant from the Lighton Foundation, and he began a yearlong working relationship with 7 Rivers Resort in Tally Bend, Missouri. Michael has received the Excellence in Teaching Grant from the Kansas City Learning Exchange and assisted in establishing the Art in R Park program in Roeland Park, Kansas. He is a current member of the American Foundry Society (MK Chapter), the Kansas City International Visitors Council, and the Kansas City Artist Coalition. Previously, he co-founded and co-directed the Beth Allison Gallery in Missouri and has taught at Memorial University in Newfoundland.
Recently, Michael Wickerson has begun collaborating with two separate businesses in The Netherlands. Naked Architecture provides Michael with the opportunity to share in the design and fabrication of architectural cast metal components on a variety of projects and CornbreadWorks photography and image editing has assisted in further developing his interest in the mechanics of complex tools through the use of digital photography.
Wickerson holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Waterloo and a master's of fine arts degree from York University in Toronto, Canada.