Graduates from the MFA Studio Art program, Zack Ingram and Bucky Miller, and BFA graduate Henry Smith have earned awards and significant residency opportunities after graduation last May.
Zack Ingram, There Ain't the People, screenprint on glass
In the first year of a grant partnership between Big Medium and Tito’s Handmade Vodka, Zack Ingram won the Tito’s Prize of a $15,000 award and a solo exhibition in the Big Medium Gallery. The prize exhibition will open with a special reception on Friday, October 27 and run through the East Austin Studio Tour. Ingram will also be featured on the cover of the November issue of Arts+Culture. The Tito’s Prize was created to help grow the recipient’s artistic career, support their life in Austin, and elevate artists within the community.
Bucky Miller, Grackle Actions, 2017
Bucky Miller is this year’s UMLAUF Prize winner, a prize honoring an outstanding graduate student in Studio Art from the University of Texas at Austin with an exhibition and lecture at the UMLAUF, and a cash award. A photographer and multi-media artist, Miller was selected by Juror Bill Arning who wrote, "Bucky Miller is the type of rule-breaking, thought-provoking artist that gives me faith in the next generation of artists emerging from grad programs today. His mixing of photography and object, nature and its artificial mirror, deployed memorably to create spatially orchestrated experience made giving him the top honor an easy choice."
Miller’s exhibition, Grackle Action, will be on view from Sept 5 – Nov 26, 2017.
Henry Smith, Swirl, 2017
MASS gallery in Austin invited two artists to transform its gallery space this past summer for their fourth annual Hotbox residency program, one of whom was recent graduate Henry Smith (BFA in Studio Art, 2017). In a continuation of his work at UT Austin, Smith hosts a series of events that are a combination of performance and installation, exploring satire as a means of engaging larger social conversations.
“MASS's location is what initially drew me to this residency,” writes Smith. “The gallery is a major component of the Austin art scene, and is also located amongst an array of other businesses. As a result, it has been an ideal location for me to interact directly with members of the creative community, as well as unsuspecting patrons of the neighboring establishments. I've also been able to expand on work I conceived during my undergraduate career that required a venue outside of school in order to be fully formed.”
MASS gallery’s Hotbox residency program is a challenge to an artist’s current practice and designed to provide audiences with a new way of encountering and understanding the creative process. Smith and his co-resident Urzulka Barker will conclude their time at MASS in a single exhibition and open studio session on Friday, Sept 8, 2017.