![\"\"](\"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/Mack.jpg\")
<\/a>Mack<\/p><\/div>\n
Mack and Pryor each received $1,000 as part of their awards.<\/p>\n
Mack is the author of \u201cFictional Blues: Narrative Self-Invention from Bessie Smith to Jack White\u201d about how blues artists \u2014 both Black and non-Black literary and real-life blues musicians \u2014 use their work to invent personas that resist racial, social, economic and gendered oppression. She is writing a memoir, \u201cI Love Rock \u2019n\u2019 Roll: A Black Girl\u2019s Musical Journey Across America\u2019s Great Racial and Class Divide.\u201d<\/p>\n
“The Arts Commission Merit Award means a lot to me, as it provided timely financial support for research I conducted at the Center for Brooklyn History at the Brooklyn Public Library in New York City,\u201d Mack said. \u201cMy memoir-in-progress is about the importance of rock music in my relationship with my mother during my 1970s Brooklyn childhood, and I needed to do research about Brooklyn in order to provide a larger cultural and historical context for my narrative.”<\/p>\n
“The award is also meaningful because, as a busy academic with numerous teaching, research and service commitments, I don\u2019t have as much time as I would like to devote to my creative writing \u2014 the artistic work that I care a lot about,\u201d Mack added. \u201cAnd so, this honor has given me the opportunity to turn my focus back to my creative writing for a significant amount of time, and for that I am deeply grateful.”<\/p>\n
<\/a>Pryor<\/p><\/div>\n
Pryor is a collage and digital artist who uses digital collage and the manipulation of old photographic processes like calotypes, ambrotypes, tintypes and daguerreotypes to create a bridge between the past and the present \u2014 especially as it relates to those who have been forgotten, overlooked or underrepresented in history. \u00a0She has participated in several collaborative artists groups through The Kolaj Institute and her collage work was recently exhibited in Birr, Ireland, and at the Knoxville Museum of Art. Her works have appeared in numerous online and print publications.<\/p>\n
\u201cRecognition by the Arts Commission is particularly meaningful, not only on a personal level, but it reflects on the growing appreciation of collage as a fine arts form,\u201d Pryor said.\u00a0\u201cWhile I am drawn to collage as a democratic and accessible tool for community engagement, collage has an important history both inside and outside the art world. Perhaps because this art form is so accessible, requiring only fragments of materials (paper, fabric, etc.) and something to hold the elements together (glue, thread, etc.), collage has sometimes been neglected as a significant artistic form.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis award will help me extend the reach of collage as a medium through which we can explore difficult and often polarizing issues such as race, class and gender to foster greater understanding and dialogue,\u201d Pryor added. \u201cThis semester I am teaching a course on collage and community inside the Toledo Correctional Institution.\u00a0Students will have the opportunity to explore in writing and \u2014 thanks to this award \u2014 collage, complex social and political concepts.\u00a0The class will culminate with the students creating a large-scale collage for display in conjunction at International Collage Day in May.\u00a0The monetary award allows me to purchase materials for my students that would otherwise be prohibitively expensive.\u201d<\/p>\n
Visit the Arts Commission website<\/a> to read more about the merit awards program including other 2021 award recipients.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dr. Kimberly Mack\u00a0received the award for Literary Arts and Dr. Ashley Pryor received the award for Visual Arts, Collage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":878,"featured_media":71133,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,60,1,7],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71127"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/878"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71127"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71127\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71130,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71127\/revisions\/71130"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a>