A man with wavy dark hair, glasses, and a slight smile wears a patterned white shirt and a dark blazer. The background is plain and out of focus. The image is in black and white.

Steven Lemke

Visiting Assistant Professor

Office: SJU ART 108

320-363-3575

[email protected]

Biography

Steven Lemke uses sculpture, installation art and digital fabrication technology to speak to issues of land use, architectural production, and community. His research-based social practice has received funding from the U.S. Department of State, the College Art Association (CAA), the Minnesota State Arts Board, the Central Minnesota Arts Board, the Nanovic Institute for European Studies, and the Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts. Recent residencies include the Anderson Center at Tower View/Stadt Salzburg Residency in Austria, the Steven Holl Foundation/T-Space Architecture Fellowship in New York, and the Saint Croix Watershed Research Station Residency in Marine on Saint Croix, Minnesota. Lemke is the recipient of a 2019-2020 U.S. Fulbright Research Fellowship in Sculpture, where he examined the relationship between master-planned space and identity in the former Czechoslovakia.

Education

  • MFA, University of Notre Dame
  • BA, Saint John’s University
  • U.S. Fulbright Research Fellow in Sculpture to the Slovak Republic (2019-2020)
  • Guest of the Sculpture in Architecture and 3D Virtual Space Studio at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design Bratislava (2019-2020)

Awards

  • Catholic Benedictine Educator Award, College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University (2025)
  • Upstream Artist Fellowship, Minnesota Upstream (2023)
  • Architecture in Orbit Certificate, T-Space and Steven Holl Architects (2022)
  • Honorable Mention for Excellence in Teaching, Midwest Association of Graduate Schools (2019)
  • Riley Prize in Art History and Criticism, University of Notre Dame (2018)

Teaches

Introduction to Sculpture, Intermediate/Advanced Sculpture, Environmental Art and Architecture, Learning Integrations: Design for the Common Good

Personal Work

A small house sculpture is mounted high on a corner wall, with a rope made of tied fabric hanging down to a green mat below. A white mouse figurine sits on the mat, facing the rope.
A sculptural installation with large, irregular gray slabs supported by wooden beams and metal rods, arranged on a plywood base in a gallery corner. The slabs appear to float at various heights and angles.
A small model of a white house with black shutters and roof sits on a patch of artificial grass, featuring a white telescope mounted on the chimney. The house is displayed indoors near a window and a brick wall.
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