Kaz McCue
Born 1963
Kaz McCue has spent the past twenty-five years working in the arts as a visual artist, educator, curator, and arts administrator and currently serves as Instructor of Visual Arts at the Leelanau School and as Artistic Director for Michigan Legacy Art Park. He holds a BFA in photography from Parson’s School of Design and an MFA in mixed media from Long Island University/ C.W. Post Campus. Kaz has received numerous grants and awards and has exhibited his work nationally and internationally. As a curator, he has put together over 200 exhibitions and over 100 lectures and artist presentations. Kaz has taught at numerous universities, colleges and academies and has served in several arts administration positions. In 2009, his work was the subject of a catalog entitled “Bad Seed” with essays by Judy Collischan and Sarah Glover that explore the masculine stereotype in relation to ideas of social justice that are encapsulated in Kaz’s installation work.
As a professional, Kaz has dedicated his life to the arts. The diversity of his background and the wealth of his experience have shaped him into a mature and knowledgeable artist-citizen. His enthusiasm and dedication has helped to define his career and his belief in the power of the arts has driven his commitment to participating in the process of the arts and mentoring young artists.
Artist Statement
Artistically, I am a storyteller. I focus on personal expression and the translation of ideas through an interdisciplinary attitude and I use the creative process to study cultural ideas. My aggressive approach towards my work helps me to brings my personality and my attitude into the commentaries I create and I can more personally narrate, satirize, question, and comment on aspects of my physical and psychological environment. By manipulating contents and contexts, each piece becomes an abstraction of things we know, see, and understand as a society and tells of our contemporary culture through my own search for meaning. Through my installation work, I can introduce, incorporate, and recombine a multitude of ideas as expressed through images, objects and materials. This gives me a platform to tell stories of my own relationship with time and place, politics, religion, class, gender roles, personal relationships and other aspects of how I fit into the world around me.
