Beauvais Lyons

(b.1958) lives in Knoxville
Association for Creative Zoology “Austrolapithecus Simiacentaurensis”, 2007
ink on paper, 29 ¼ x 34 ¼ inches, 2009.54.3

Chancellor’s Professor at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, Lyons has taught printmaking since 1985. Lyons received his B.F.A. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and his M.F.A. from Arizona State University. His solo exhibitions have been presented at over 80 museums and galleries in the United States and abroad. His prints are in numerous public collections including the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Washington, DC; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; and the Philadelphia Museum of Art in PA. In 2002 he received a Fulbright Fellowship to teach at the Fine Arts Academy in Poznañ, Poland. In 2014 he received the Santo Foundation Artist Award. He has published articles on his work in Archaeology, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Contemporary Impressions, The New Art Examiner and others.

For the past three decades I have created academic parody in a variety of mediums. For much of this time I fabricated and documented imaginary cultures. More recently I have been interested in biography, folk art, medicine, zoology and circuses.  – Lyons