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Volume 71, Issue 128,
Monday, April 17, 2006
News Art faculty vies for local award Selected by the Houston art community,
three professors
by MOHAMMED OLOKODE
Three UH art professors are vying for the Hunting Art Prize worth $50,000. Gael Stack, Al Souza, and Aaron Parazette are three of nine finalists competing for the prize to be awarded at The Corinthian in Downtown Houston on April 29. The Hunting Art Prize is sponsored by Hunting PLC, an international oil services company that began in 1874. Members of the Houston art community selected the nominees. To qualify for the prize, artists must have lived in the greater Houston area for at least two years. The applicants submitted their work on slides and jurors determine the winner in a two-step process. First, the finalists are chosen from the slides and then jurors visit each of the finalists to see their artwork in person. The winner's work will be displayed at that gala. Parazette, who came to Houston in 1990 as a Core Fellow of the Glassell School of Art in the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, graduated from the University of South Florida and The Claremont Graduate School. He received the Mid-American Art Alliance, NEA Fellowship in 1994, and his work has been shown in 80 exhibitions including solo exhibitions in Los Angeles, Dallas and San Antonio. Parazette has participated in group exhibitions in Boston, New York and Korea. He did a two-person show with Ken Price at the Austin Museum of Art and with Francesca Fuchs at Sala Diaz in San Antonio, both in 2001. Souza received both bachelors and master's degrees at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and began his teaching career in Smith College in Massachusetts. He came to the University of Houston in 1992. He has been awarded a California Arts Council Artist Fellowship, two NEA Visual Arts Fellowships and Massachusetts Council on the Arts Fellowships. His artwork has been in more than 70 solo and group exhibitions the United States and Europe. Souza said he wouldn't call the Hunting Art Prize a contest. Instead he said he considers it more of an invitation to participate in a prestigious and popular event that showcases talented artists. "I'm very honored to be with the other people who are the finalists for this, too," Souza said. "I know most of the (finalists) and so it's very good company to be with." Stack received her bachelor and master's degrees from the University of Illinois and Southern Illinois University, respectively. She received a Cultural Arts Council of Houston award for Visual Arts and the 1997 Texas Artist of the Year from the Art League of Houston. Her work has been featured in exhibitions in France, New York, and San Antonio. Souza said he was inspired by a college professor to pursue his passion for art. "I knew I wanted to do art when I was an undergraduate student. I have actually been an engineering major and then I had to take one art course as a liberal arts background," he said. "He showed me that I was (more) interested in materials as art materials than I was interested in materials for engineering. And what he did is he found my passion and he found the direction that I was to go in, and that is what I do with students now," Souza said. Souza said that passion should determine what a student studies. "Even if I have someone who's an art major, I might find out that they're much more interested in doing something else, let's say, like playing an instrument. So I really tell them that maybe you should become a music major. "It's not the talent that you have; it's the passion that you have," Souza said. Souza uses jigsaw puzzles to create his art. He takes apart pre-constructed puzzles in large chunks and glues the chunks together on top of one another on wood. When he finishes he celebrates, Souza said. He looks back at his work and then moves on without changing it. "It makes me really excited to see because it didn't exist before and I made this exist. And that's very exciting to bring this image into the world. "I mean, you've done it. It was successful … I have no regrets about it. You move on and do the next one, and do the next one after that. So it's never going back to old work and changing it, it's always about going on to the next one … you move on to the next job." Send comments to dcnews@mail.uh.edu |
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