(News release) – Eric Swangstu, a painter, art administrator and gallery owner, will present a talk titled: “Common Courtesy: Approaching a Gallery” at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 15 in Potter Hall, room 107 as part of Missouri Western State University’s Artist Entrepreneurship Speaker Series. The talk is free and open to the public.

Swangstu will talk to artists about the property way of approaching galleries, how to prepare and what to expect. He will also talk about navigating the graduate school application process. Swangstu ran his own gallery and is currently the admissions director of the University of Washington’s Master of Human-Computer Interaction and Design program.

As an artist, Swangstu participated in Mel Chin’s artist collective, the GALA Committee, in the late 90s, when the group placed public art on the set of the television show “Melrose Place.” His artwork is included in the permanent collections of the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., and the Government Employees Hospital Association in Kansas City, Missouri.