P.O. Box 210002
1031 N. Olive Rd
Tucson, Arizona 85721-0002
United States
The University of Arizona School of Art is pleased to announce recent Marcia Grand Centennial Sculpture Prize recipients. Building on the excellence of our graduate program, the Marcia Grand Centennial Sculpture Prize Competition is intended to provide MFA seeking graduate students with up to 10,000 USD to support the completion of work in the sculptural/3D arts.
Expecting Nothing is Going to Change, located at the The Land With No Name Sanctuary for Homeless Sculpture, questions our belief in and desire for permanence within a decidedly impermanent world. Its creator, Olivier Dubois-Cherrier, explores human nature and its fatal attraction for dehumanizing systems in his work, which spans a wide range of material and practices. This installation consists of an 8’x16’ billboard made with untreated wood aesthetically located in a sublime landscape. The billboard has been painted on site in an impressionist manner, utilizing found material from the ground mixed with house paints and acrylic mediums. The sublime view is hidden from the painting, but the painting itself creates a presence that draws the viewer more deeply into the landscape. No effort will be made to preserve the installation; its decay until full erosion will be documented over time.
Olivier is a 2017 Centennial Award recipient.
Untitled (Point of Entry), a public installation created by Karlito Miller-Espinosa, is currently on display in the courtyard of the Environment and Natural Resources 2 building (ENR2) at the University of Arizona. Miller-Espinosa, an MFA student at the University of Arizona School of Art, creates work informed by the devastating local crisis of migrant death and disappearance in the Arizona desert. Untitled (Point of Entry) is a monument to those who have died and who continue to die as they attempt to cross the Sonoran desert borderlands northward.
Karlito is a 2017 Centennial Award recipient.
Tracing Ancient Oceans, a sculptural installation by Isan Brant at Biosphere 2, asks us to slow down. The sculptures are an inquiry into the layers of geologic and human architectural history that make up the structure of place. Investigating the widening awareness gap between resource extraction and our modern lifestyle’s demand on the earth, this project asks, what is the shape left in the land by our extractive industries?
Isan is a 2016 Centennial Award recipient.
