Multidisciplinary artist Sherrill Roland of Morrisville, NC, was awarded the 2020 Southern Prize by South Arts in Atlanta, GA. Roland, whose powerful work is deeply influenced by a three-year period of wrongful incarceration, received a $25,000 cash award and a two-week residency at The Hambidge Center for Creative Arts and Sciences. Alabama artist Carlton Nell, whose meditative drawings using silver on film explore the abstractness of the natural world, received the Southern Prize Finalist award of $10,000. The awards were announced in a ceremony held online on May 18, 2020.
Work by Sherrill Roland
Roland and Nell were among the nine South Arts State Fellowship recipients honored by South Arts, each of whom received a $5,000 award in March 2020. An exhibition of all nine artists’ work is anticipated to open at the Bo Bartlett Center in Columbus, Georgia in August 2020.
Installation by Kristi Ryba
The South Arts State Fellowships are juried, state-specific competitive awards to visual artists representing the nine states served by South Arts. The 2020 State Fellowship award recipients are:
Carlton Nell. Opelika, Alabama. Drawing.
Alba Triana. Miami, Florida. Experimental.
Fahamu Pecou. Decatur, Georgia. Painting.
Letitia Quesenberry. Louisville, Kentucky. Multidisciplinary.
Karen Ocker. New Orleans, Louisiana. Painting.
Ashleigh Coleman. Jackson, Mississippi. Photography.
Sherrill Roland. Morrisville, North Carolina. Multidisciplinary.
Kristi Ryba. Charleston, South Carolina. Painting.
Bill Steber. Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Photography.
“More than ever, South Arts is proud to support the artists in our region,” said executive director Susie Surkamer. “Artists such as Sherrill Roland interpret and tackle some of the most pressing issues facing society. Before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic, it is vital to ensure that artists have the resources to work and thrive in our region.”
Launched in 2017, the Southern Prize and State Fellowships celebrate and support the highest quality artistic work being created in the South. Hundreds of visual artists submitted work for consideration, and a national panel of jurors reviewed the applications through the lens of artistic excellence representing the diversity of the region. A second national panel of jurors reviewed the State Fellows to determine the Southern Prize winner and finalist. Each panel is conducted blind, with the applicants’ identities withheld from the jurors.
The State Fellowship jurors were Ndubuisi C. Ezeluomba of the New Orleans Museum of Art, Edward Hayes, Jr. of The McNay Art Museum, independent art historian and consultant David Houston, and Marilyn Zapf of the Center for Craft. The Southern Prize jurors were Pradeep Dalal of Creative Capital, Grace Deveney of Prospect New Orleans, and former executive director of Penland School of Crafts Jean W. McLaughlin.
Visual artists living in South Arts’ nine-state region and producing crafts, drawing, experimental, painting, photography, sculpture, mixed media, and multidisciplinary work were eligible to apply. The awards are presented to the artists as unrestricted funds. To view the 2020 Southern Prize and State Fellows’ submissions and learn more about the competition, visit (www.southarts.org).
South Arts advances Southern vitality through the arts. The nonprofit regional arts organization was founded in 1975 to build on the South’s unique heritage and enhance the public value of the arts. South Arts’ work responds to the arts environment and cultural trends with a regional perspective. South Arts offers an annual portfolio of activities designed to support the success of artists and arts providers in the South, address the needs of Southern communities through impactful arts-based programs, and celebrate the excellence, innovation, value and power of the arts of the South. For more information, visit (www.southarts.org).
NORTH CAROLINA
Sherrill Roland. Multidisciplinary. Morrisville, NC.
2020 South Arts North Carolina Fellow and Southern Prize Winner
Sherrill Roland was born in Asheville, NC. He received both his BFA in Design and MFA in Studio Art from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Sherrill is an interdisciplinary artist and the founder of The Jumpsuit Project. His Socially Engaged Art project has been presented at Open Engagement Chicago, Oakland City Hall and the Michigan School of Law. Recent exhibitions include CAM Houston, LACE: Los Angeles and Studio Museum of Harlem. He was recently an Artist-In-Residence at the McColl Center of Art + Innovation in Charlotte, NC and a Rights of Return USA Fellow.
Artist Statement:
The perception of innocence, identity, and community can dictate our access to basic human rights.
My interdisciplinary practice addresses the complex construction of these three core entities: innocence, identity, and community; and reimagines their social and political implications in the context of the American criminal justice system.
For more than three years, I was forced to relinquish control of my life to the criminal justice system due to wrongful incarceration. After spending ten months in jail for a crime I was exonerated for, I looked to art as a vehicle for self-reflection and an outlet for emotional release. I began a year-long performance at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro in which I wore an orange jumpsuit every day until graduation. The Jumpsuit Project challenges audiences to address their prejudices about the jumpsuit, my body, and the issues surrounding incarceration. The work reshapes the narrative of the incarcerated and provides support for those most impacted. By sharing my story, and creating a space for others to share, I work to illuminate the invisible costs, damages, and burdens of incarceration.
As I migrate through traditional and non-traditional art spaces, I recognize the need to expand the conversation surrounding incarceration. Recent work incorporates the voices of the formerly incarcerated, increases the access of audiences to current resources, and provides new forms of content through performance, sculpture, drawing, and community workshops.
SOUTH CAROLINA
Kristi Ryba. Painting. Charleston, SC.
2020 South Arts South Carolina Fellow
Kristi Ryba enchants viewers with her narrative works as she combines the elaborate skill of handmade egg tempera painting with subjects that explore contemporary events and messages of morality. Museum visitors will experience the different stages of a painting; how the artist lays out the composition, prepares the painting supports, grinds the pigment, and applies gold leaf to envelop the final piece in regalia.
Kristi Ryba holds an MFA from Vermont College, Montpelier, VT and most recently won 2nd place in the esteemed annual visual art competition ArtFields (2018). The artist is represented by Corrigan Gallery in Charleston, South Carolina and is in numerous private collections including the Medical University of South Carolina.
Artist Statement:
Over the last several years, my interest in the study of Medieval and Renaissance art has informed my work. This series of paintings is taken from images from centuries ago and serve as a vehicle to simplify an urgent message by providing the symbolic and instructional imagery to illustrate and illuminate the leadership crisis we are in. All the gold, elaborate surroundings and messages of morality and ethics corresponded with what is happening in our government; the gutting of our social safety net and health care, eliminating environmental protections, the lack of restraint in spending money on personal enrichment and pleasure and the build-up of military spending and deficit in international diplomacy to name a few.
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