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UA Instructor Jamey Grimes Wins Select Southern Art Award

Full-time instructor Jamey Grimes has been named the 2019 South Arts State Fellowship recipient for Alabama and awarded $5,000The South Arts State Fellowships are awarded to one artist each in nine southern states whose work reflects the best of the visual arts in the South. Artistic excellence is the sole criterion for selection. 

Grimes will now compete for the Southern Prize, which includes an additional $25,000 cash award and a two-week residency at the Hambidge Center for the Creative Arts and Sciences. Grimes, along with the other State Fellows, will be featured in an exhibit at the 701 Center for Contemporary Art in Columbia, South Carolina, from March 21 – May 5, 2019. The winner of the Southern Prize and a $10,000 finalist award will be announced at a ceremony celebrating the State Fellows on April 15 at 701 CCA.  

Jamey Grimes, copyright e-Tech, College of Arts and Sciences, 2013

The South Arts Southern Prize and State Fellowships acknowledge, support and celebrate the highest quality artistic work being created in the American South. The program is open to individual artists living in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee.

This is the first year that the South Arts fellowship winners will be featured in a group exhibit. “One of our goals is to celebrate the excellence, innovation, value and power of the arts of the South,” continued Surkamer. “By curating a public exhibit of the State Fellows, we are able to share their dynamic work and highlight the breadth of style cultivated throughout our region.”

Jamey Grimes installation in Don't Fence Me In, at Stephen Smith Fine Art in Fairfield. Installation by Jamey Grimes, Snow's Bend 2017 (Phase 2018) Jamey Grimes, Wash, IXXf, Chipola

Jamey Grimes, who has taught in UA’s Department of Art and Art History since 2008 and is an alumnus of its MFA program, has shown his artwork widely throughout the US. His exhibitions include the Montgomery (Ala.) Museum of Fine Arts; Austin Peay State University’s New Gallery, Clarksville, Tenn.; Stephen Smith Fine Art, Fairfield, Ala.; Kendall Galleries, Grand Rapids, Mich.; Dunedin Fine Art Center, Fla.; Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts; Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts, Grand Rapids, Mich.; Sculpture Key West; and FAT Village, Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

Grimes’ sculpture has been installed in temporary and permanent venues around the country. Throughfall was permanently installed at Pinnacle Bank, Nashville, Tenn., in 2009. In 2012, his work was selected for the lobby of the Pinellas County Health Department in Largo, Fla., and in 2013 his sculpture was installed at the Fairmont Chicago at Millennium Park in Chicago, Il. In 2017, Grimes installed a second large-scale sculpture, Flow, in the headquarters of Pinnacle Bank in Nashville, Tenn.

Grimes was awarded the 2015 Visual Arts Educator of the Year by the Arts Council of Tuscaloosa. He is a 2012-2013 Alabama State Council on the Arts Visual Arts Fellowship Recipient. He won the 29th West Alabama Juried Art Show Purchase Prize (2013); the Purchase Award at the 39th Annual Bi-State Art Competition, Meridian Museum of Art, Meridian, MS (2012); and was selected for the 10th Anniversary Installation, 4 Bridges Arts Festival, First Tennessee Pavilion, Chattanooga, TN. Grimes was also the Guest Juror for the 2015 Orange Beach (AL) Arts Festival; he was the 2014 Creativity in Collaboration Grant recipient for Projection Mapping, with UA’s Creative Campus.

Lighting tests for Jamey Grimes, “Eclipse,” The New Gallery, Austin Peay State University, 2017 Jamey Grimes, Wash, IIIh, Troy, AL Jamey Grimes, Wash, IXXf, Chipola

Go to our website for more information about UA’s Department of Art and Art History degree programs.