Meadows Museum announces 2016 Moss/Chumley Artist Award winner Sedrick Huckaby

DALLAS (SMU) —The Meadows Museum at SMU announces that Sedrick Huckaby has won the 2016 Moss/Chumley North Texas Artist Award.

The award is given annually to an outstanding North Texas artist who has exhibited professionally for at least ten years and has established a proven track record as a community advocate for the visual arts. Huckaby received the award last night at a private reception held at the Museum; his portrait Rising, Sonny, Son (2014) will be on view at the Museum through February 12.

“Huckaby is both interpreter and innovator. His portraits reveal a deep knowledge of a centuries-old painting tradition that, through depicting his own reality, Huckaby has made into an art that is truly authentic to him,“ said Nicole Atzbach, Meadows Museum curator and chair of the jury panel.

This year’s Moss/Chumley Award winner is a Fort Worth native known for large-scale paintings incorporating a thick, impasto technique. Drawing inspiration from his African-American roots, his subject matter has shifted over the years from paintings of traditional quilts to insightful portraits of himself, family and friends. His latest work, incorporating mixed media, delves into the subject of incarceration. His self-portrait Sedrick, Sed, Daddy (2014) was a finalist in the distinguished 2016 Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition at the National Portrait Gallery, in Washington, DC, and featured in the competition’s resulting exhibition The Outwin 2016: American Portraiture Today. Huckaby’s recent solo exhibitions include Sedrick Huckaby, Valley House Gallery & Sculpture Garden, Dallas, Texas (2016); Sedrick Huckaby: The 99%, UNT ArtSpace Dallas, University of North Texas, Dallas, Texas (2015); and Just A Few Patches, Walton Art Center, Fayetteville, Arkansas (2014). He has exhibited at art fairs in Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Cleveland and Chicago. His work can be found in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, Minneapolis Institute of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art, among others.

Jury member Joan Davidow, director emerita of the Dallas Contemporary, commented, “I’ve watched his work mature in the years since his solo show as part of our Mix! Series. Those early patchwork quilt paintings were luscious! The work was personal, energetic and fresh…and I learned he was a lovely human being to boot. He deserved to be seen.” David Leggett, another jury member, as well as the Meadows Museum’s membership manager and a practicing artist, said, “For me his work has a colorful warmth. It is not only beautiful (especially his quilts and the familiar legacy he paints with regard to quilts), but his latest work If Perhaps by Chance, I Find Myself Encaged (2016) seizes the social-political struggles and issues of today. His work may be autobiographical but it’s also relevant.”

The Moss/Chumley Award was founded to recognize not only talented artists living in North Texas, but also to acknowledge those who have proven track records as community advocates for the arts. Huckaby consistently works to cultivate and encourage young artists by leading workshops for high school and community college students, performing speaking engagements at local schools, and serving as a juror or judge at student art shows. His community involvement also extends to ACT-SO (Afro-Academic, Cultural, Technological and Scientific Olympics), The KEEN Group, Imagination Celebration, and the Dallas Children’s Advocacy Center.

At the reception Huckaby remarked, “I am humbled to be the recipient of the Moss/Chumley award because it is an award that is not just based on the merit of the work, but also on the merit of the person.”

Sedrick Huckaby obtained a bachelor of fine arts degree from Boston University and a master of fine arts degree from Yale University. Upon graduation, Huckaby was the recipient of numerous awards and honors. With funds from the Alice Kimball English Traveling Fellowship, Huckaby was able to travel the U.S. and abroad studying the works of Henry Tanner. Huckaby returned from European travels in 2001, and after settling back into his home town of Fort Worth, he began to work and teach there. Winner of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant, he is presently assistant professor of painting in the Art Department of the University of Texas at Arlington.

The jury for the 2016 Moss/Chumley award included Atzbach and Leggett as noted above; Danielle Avram, freelance arts writer and gallery director, Texas Woman’s University;  Joan Davidow, co-director, SITE131 and director emerita, Dallas Contemporary; Shelley DeMaria, curatorial assistant, Meadows Museum; Heyd Fontenot, artist and former director of Central Trak; and Annette Lawrence, 2015 winner of the Moss/Chumley Award and professor and chair of studio art, University of North Texas.

Moss/Chumley Memorial Fund and Artist Award

The Moss/Chumley Memorial Fund was created in 1989 by Frank Moss and the Meadows Museum as a tribute to Jim Chumley; Moss's name was added to the fund upon his death in 1991. Moss and Chumley were two Dallas art dealers who made outstanding contributions to the visual arts in North Texas during the 1980s. The pair operated the Nimbus Gallery on Routh Street from 1980 to 1987 and the Moss/Chumley Gallery at the Crescent Court from 1986 to 1989, where they showcased numerous new artists.

Established in 1995, the Moss/Chumley Artist Award is given in their memory.  The award—which carries a cash prize of $2,500—is open to artists working in any medium who live in one of the eleven North Texas counties: Collin, Dallas, Denton, Ellis, Hunt, Johnson, Kaufman, Parker, Rockwall, Tarrant and Wise.

Past recipients have included Isabelle duToit, Juliette McCullough, Catherine Chauvin, Kaleta Doolin, David Dreyer, Susan Kae Grant, David Hickman, Tracy Hicks, Stephen Lapthisophon, Darryl Lauster, David McCullough, Bob Nunn, Sherry Owens, Ludwig Schwarz, Noah Simblist, Janet Tyson, Marie Van Arsdale, Mary Vernon, Marilyn Waligore and Christopher Blay.

About the Meadows Museum

The Meadows Museum is the leading U.S. institution focused on the study and presentation of the art of Spain. In 1962, Dallas businessman and philanthropist Algur H. Meadows donated his private collection of Spanish paintings, as well as funds to start a museum, to Southern Methodist University. The Museum opened to the public in 1965, marking the first step in fulfilling Meadows’s vision to create “a small Prado for Texas.”

Today, the Meadows is home to one of the largest and most comprehensive collections of Spanish art outside of Spain. The collection spans from the 10th to the 21st centuries and includes medieval objects, Renaissance and Baroque sculptures, and major paintings by Golden Age and modern masters. Since 2010 the Museum has been engaged in a multidimensional partnership with the Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid, which has included the exchange of scholarship, exhibitions, works of art and other resources.

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Media Contact: 

Carrie L. Sanger
Marketing & PR Manager
Meadows Museum
214-768-1584
csanger@smu.edu