CAM’s new program series RE: features in-depth conversations with experts engaged in research in a variety of cultural fields. This season walk through the exhibitions with Chief Curator Jeffrey Uslip and Matthew Fluharty, research fellow in American Cultural Studies at Washington University in St. Louis and founder of Art of the Rural, a resource for information and commentary on contemporary rural arts and culture. Join in the discussion of rural aesthetics in America through the lens of Missouri’s own outlaw artist, Jesse Howard.

Matthew Fluharty is the founder and executive director of Art of the Rural, facilitator of its Middle Landscape projects, and a member of the M12 collective. Fluharty’s work focuses on multidisciplinary approaches to the arts and humanities from the twentieth century to the contemporary moment. Currently, he is a Research Fellow in American Culture Studies at Washington University in St. Louis. At Washington University, he has taught within the English Department, American Culture Studies Program, Skandalaris Center for Entrepreneurial Studies, and the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Art. In addition, he is researching, writing, conducting fieldwork, and engaging in place-based projects along the intersections of land use and agriculture, the vernacular, and rural-urban exchange. Fluharty’s poetry and essays have been widely published and are present in the field-establishing compendium A Decade of Country Hits: Art on the Rural Frontier.