Nashville artist Alicia Henry, who created one of eight public-commissioned artworks at the Music City Center, will discuss her life in the arts at Vanderbilt Divinity School Oct. 9.
Henry, who is an associate professor of art at Fisk University, will speak from noon to 1 p.m. in the Art Room (G-20). Her talk, “A Work in Progress,” is presented by the Religion in the Arts and Contemporary Culture program. Henry will focus on various pieces of her work, her philosophy and methodologies.
She earned her bachelor’s degree in painting from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her master’s degree from Yale University School of Art.
Henry has been the recipient of numerous awards, fellowships and grants, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, Ford Foundation Fellowship, and a Joan Mitchell Foundation Painter and Sculptor Grant. She also was awarded residencies at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts; the MacDowell Art Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire; and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Madison, Maine. She was a volunteer art teacher in the Peace Corps and on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota.
In a previous artist statement for an exhibition at Zeitgeist Gallery, Henry wrote, “Isolation and interaction is a common recurring idea in my work. I am interested in the complexities and the contradictions surrounding familial relationships as well as societal differences and how these variations affect individual and group responses to themes of beauty, the body and identity. My current work explores these ideas, addressing the process through which groups (specifically female) navigate these issues.”
The Hunter Museum of American Art, Cheekwood Museum, Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Islip Museum and Aldrich Museum have featured Henry’s works in solo and group exhibitions.
Henry’s art talk is free and open to the public. For more information, email Dave Perkins or call 615-322-2776.