Creative Alliance houses eight live/work resident artist spaces on the second floor of The Patterson. We select emerging, midlevel, and established artists who work in a variety of media and are producing several extraordinary, innovative projects right now! Read the recent accolades of our current residents and bios of four new resident artists who are moving in this summer!
AMY SHERALD
Creative Alliance is delighted to announce that our resident artist Amy Sherald won 1st place in the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC. Sherald is the first woman ever to win first place in this prestigious invitation-only, bi-annual competition. Sherald will receive a $25,000 award and an opportunity to create a portrait for the National Portrait Gallery’s permanent collection. Sherald also just opened new exhibition of her paintings at Chicago’s Monique Meloche Gallery. The exhibition, “A Wonderful Dream,” is on view through August 27, 2016. amysherald.com
PAUL RUCKER
After winning the Mary Sawyer Baker Prize in 2015 for REWIND, which was first exhibited at Creative Alliance, resident artist Paul Rucker’s riveting body of work was subsequently on view at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Paul continues to garner international recognition for his interdisciplinary artwork and performances. In late 2015, Paul was awarded a prestigious Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant. This was followed in 2016 by a residency at The MacDowell Colony, one of the most prestigious fellowships in the United States, a Media Arts and Performing Arts Rubys Grant, a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship (SARF) with the new Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture (fall 2016), and a 2016 Artist as Activist Fellow: Racial Justice + Mass Incarceration through the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation. Rucker is included in the upcoming “American Power” exhibition opening July 7 in Seattle at Center for Contemporary Art (COCA). He is also exhibiting in the group project “Out of Sight,” as part of the 2016 Seattle Art Fair this August.
ALICE GADZINSKI
Alice Gadzinski’s sculptural work is an examination of authenticity, a Sisyphean pursuit of an “original.” She explores ideas of taste and the pressures of social performance, examining the present through past “camp” iconographies. Influenced by the point of identity formation when childhood pretending evolves into adulthood denial, Gadzinski uses elements of the The Lawrence Welk Show to create work in a space between reality and fantasy. Each piece demonstrates a guilty pleasure in the artificial and the construction of female identity. In revealing the norm as artifice and facade, her work redefines social obstacles as a source of empowerment.
In 2016, Gadzinski earned her MFA in Sculpture from Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), Rinehart School of Sculpture, and her BFA in Photography from the Kendall College of Art and Design, Grand Rapids, MI in 2010. In 2015 she was a teaching artist at the American Visionary Art Museum, and a Graduate Teaching Assistant at MICA. While at MICA she was the recipient of the Perna Krick ’31 & Reuben Kramer ’32 Fellowship, a Graduate Research Grant, the Rinehart School of Sculpture Merit Scholarship, and MICA’s LAB Award.
ADAM DAVIES
Adam Davies’s unmanipulated photographs explore points of intersection between architecture and the natural world. He received an EdM from Harvard University and a MFA from Carnegie Mellon University. From 2010 to 2013, he was a Lecturer & Media Specialist at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and previously held teaching positions at Carnegie Mellon, Robert Morris, Catholic, and Harvard universities. Davies is a past recipient of the Vira I. Heinz Endowment Fellowship and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowship. His photographs have appeared in a number of publications, including East City Art, Photo Review, and Triple Canopy Magazine. He has been a resident at Yaddo, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the Chinati Foundation, Jentel, and the Edward Albee Foundation. Davies has received multiple fellowships from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities in support of his current long-term project, which is an examination of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century public transport infrastructure in the Mid-Atlantic region. Recently, he was honored as Outstanding Emerging Artist at Washington DC 30th Annual Mayor’s Arts Awards and is the recipient of the 2015 Clarence John Laughlin Award.
JERRY ALLEN GILMORE
Jerry Allen Gilmore’s most recent work reflects his realization that life’s every movement possesses a humorous bend in the river, where “one may be given aid by animals, magicians and shamans or menaced by devils, clowns and bumble bees. Where you go depends upon where you have been, and where you can go depends upon what you can imagine.” As with his previous work, his new pieces are autobiographical, full of repurposed and retraced narratives, such as identity, sexuality, spirituality, beauty and mortality.A prolific painter and printmaker, Jerry Allen Gilmore has exhibited internationally since 1978, including such prestigious venues as the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, The Phipps Center for the Arts, DeVos Art Museum of Northern Michigan University, the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, and Rochester Contemporary Art Center in New York. His work is included in numerous public and private collections, including the Denver Art Museum, the Scottsdale Public Art Program, the Arizona State University Art Museum, Tucson Museum of Art, and the State of Utah Fine Art Collection. Gilmore earned his MFA in Painting and Drawing from Washington State University in 1981 and his BFA in Fiber and Painting from Western Washington University in 1979.
TIFFANY LANGE
Tiffany Lange is an artist, designer, and illustrator. From puppetry to children’s book illustration, the intent of her art is to pause the commotion of everyday life and guide the audience toward a lighthearted sensory experience. She employs imagery that is introspective and whimsical—generating curiosity with rich hues, dynamic characters, and intriguing exaggerations of dimension. Lange is Creative Director at Charm City Puppets and the marketing agency Giant Sprout Creative, LLC. She creates custom puppets for a range of national clientele with Charm City Puppets and Chicago-based VonOrthal Puppets, and has worked as a puppet designer and teacher since 2002. In 2013, she moved from Chicago to Baltimore, and is excited to be bringing more puppetry to Charm City through group classes and private instruction. Tiffany has collaboratively designed several successful puppet-based shows, including Berwyn Avenue at the Raven Theatre and Don Quixote for The Joffrey Ballet in Chicago. Tiffany earned her MS degree in biomedical visualization (medical illustration) from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Prior to this she attained a BFA with a biological sciences minor from Clemson University in South Carolina, and completed a concentration in Fine Art at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore.
CAMERON SHOJAEI
Cameron Shojaei started drawing dinosaurs at the age of three; now he paints girls, animals, and plants at age twenty-five. Not a fan of squarish, inorganic, minimalist, non-representational design based work, he considers his aesthetic grandfathers to be the big hitters of Art Nouveau (Klimt and his consorts). Today, Shojaei paints family portraits of babies, grandmas, and dogs to pay the bills and burn in (relative) anonymity. He hopes that his legacy as an artist will be to bring representational, traditional, Rubenesque figure painting back to the main stage of high art, and to push out the fine-art-wallpaper and slash-and-burn painting techniques that dominate today’s contemporary galleries.
