alumni news

Nicolle LaMere

Summer 2023 Artist-in-Residence at Tablelands Center for Bioregional Art

Located 10 miles due north of Lubbock TX, and 3 miles east of Shallowater TX, The Tablelands Center for Bioregional Art is an operational farm and experimental research station with the goal of providing a place for researchers and creatives in any field to explore and engage with the Llano Estacado. 

While in residence, Nicolle LaMere will continue her Echo of Footfall series while taking advantage of the unique opportunity to engage the Lubbock arts community with the Llano Estacado. Echo of Footfall encompasses over 70 soil samples collected from across the USA in which identity is formed by place. These samples are compressed by hand to form polished spheres, evoking the geologic process of time and pressure. 

Completed spheres from this residency, and companion Polaroid photographs, will be on view at the Center Pivot Gallery located at Tablelands in early Fall. While the exhibition is on display, selected volunteers will document their process of navigating the Tablelands landscape to bury a series of eight soil spheres at their sites of origin. Collaborators will complete the cycle of collection, making/shaping, and repatriation by sharing their experiences in oral and written form. A subsequent publication of the residency's proceedings will be available at an upcoming exhibition at CO-OPt Research + Projects in Lubbock. 

Nicolle LaMere received her BFA from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater in 2011 and her MFA from Texas Tech University in 2017. After graduation, she participated in the Land Art of the American West field study program traveling over 6,000 miles and camping through Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and Nevada while investigating the relationship between culture and land. She has completed multiple technical ceramic research grants, the most recent being the NCECA Graduate Student Fellowship in 2015. LaMere completed an eleven-month artist residency at The Houston Center for Contemporary Craft in 2020, was awarded a guest artist position at the Shigaraki Ceramics Culture Park in Shigaraki, Japan in 2021, and was the Spring Artist in Residence at The Printing Museum in 2022. Recently, LaMere was a 2023-2024 semi-finalist for a Fulbright Distinguished Scholar Award at Glasgow School of Art, Glasgow, Scotland. LaMere currently lives in Katy, Texas and works as Education Coordinator at Art League Houston. 

Learn more about Nicolle LaMere

 

Kimbal Adams

Selected for CASP Live-Work Studio Residency

Kimbal Adams, a May graduate of the Studio Art BFA program specializing in painting, has been selected by the Charles Adams Studio Project as one of its Live-Work Artists in Residence for the coming year. Adams competed with nearly two dozen other applicants for one of the two appointments that were available.

Adams plans to use the time to expand his portfolio — focusing on the themes that his work has recently been exploring, including human experiences like memories, dreams, and anxieties, and relationships the body has with physical spaces. He will also  seek out other future opportunities such as graduate programs.

Adams won the 3rd Place Prize with a painting selected into the 36th Annual Juried Art Student Exhibition in spring 2022 and received an Honorable Mention during the 37th Annual Juried Art Student Exhibition this past spring.