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The South Dakota State University School of Design is hosting artist Elizabeth Morisette as the Stuart Artist-in-Residence Sept. 8-Oct. 2.

Morisette is a 1994 graduate of the North Carolina State University College of Design and received her Master of Fine Arts in Community Arts from Maryland Institute College of Art in 2007. She is based in Fort Collins, Colorado.

Morisette creates fiber-based sculptural installations and objects that reflect upon questions of consumption and accumulation and offer a response through actions of transformation. Her work celebrates small and large gestures through physical actions and systems for making that include classical fiber techniques of basket making and weaving.

How do the items we acquire define us individually and as a society? What happens to these items, which were once essential, when they are no longer needed, when we are done with them? Like a modern-day archeologist, Morisette explores these machine-made items, collecting them and then manipulating them by hand, bringing machine-made and handmade together to ask questions about who we are as humans and how, and if, our possessions define us.

The Stuart Artist-in-Residence program is funded through a donation from Joe and Signe Stuart, who worked and taught in Brookings for several decades. Signe Stuart was a professor of art at SDSU from 1972 to 1994, and Joe Stuart served as director and curator at the South Dakota Art Museum. Together they initiated the development of an artist-in-residence program on campus to enrich the community and create opportunities for artists, students and faculty.

Each fall, a national or international artist is invited to make art on campus for one month, interacting with us through lecture, critique, open studio hours and an open studio event in the Ritz Gallery at the end of the residency.

This program is an experimental way for students to learn from the artist and observe how their work develops.

The Stuart Artist-in-Residence lecture will be held Sept. 16 at 1 p.m. in Founders Recital Hall at the Oscar Larson Performing Arts Center. The open studio event will be Oct. 1 from 4-6 p.m. in the Ritz Gallery. Both events are free and open to the public.