Vicki Meek
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Vicki Meek, born and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is a nationally recognized artist who has exhibited widely. Meek is in the permanent collections of the African American Museum in Dallas, The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Fort Wayne Museum of Art in Indiana, Paul Quinn College in Dallas, Serie Art Project in Austin and Norwalk Community College in Norwalk, Connecticut. She was awarded three public arts commissions with the Dallas Area Rapid Transit Art Program and was co-artist on the largest public art project in Dallas, the Dallas Convention Center Public Art Project.
Meek was selected as one of ten national artists to celebrate the 10th Anniversary of the Nasher Sculpture Center with the commissioning of a site-specific installation. Meek’s retrospective Vicki Meek: 3 Decades of Social Commentary opened in November 2019 at Houston Museum of African American Culture and marked the end of her concentrating solely on her installation practice as she moves into creating work using video as the primary medium. She dubs these new works video comments since they are no more than 8 minutes in length and are done in a series format.
Vicki Meek has been awarded a number of grants and honors including National Endowment for the Arts NFRIG Grant, Dallas Observer MasterMind Award, Dallas Museum of Art Otis and Velma Davis Dozier Travel Grant, Texas Black Filmmakers Mission Award, Women of Visionary Influence Mentor Award, Dallas Women’s Foundation Maura Award, nominated for the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award, the African American Museum at Dallas A. Maceo Smith Award for Cultural Achievement and was selected as the 2021 Texas Artist of the Year by Art League of Houston.
In addition to having a studio practice, Vicki Meek is an independent curator and writes cultural criticism for Dallas Weekly with her blog Art & Racenotes and also wrote a monthly column, ARTiculate for TheaterJones, an online performing arts magazine.
Meek was an adjunct faculty member for UMass Arts Extension Program in Amherst, Massachusetts where she taught a course in Cultural Equity in the Arts. With over 40+ years of arts administrative experience that includes working as a senior program administrator for a state arts agency, a local arts agency and running a non-profit visual arts center, after 20 years, Vicki Meek retired in March 2016 as the Manager of the South Dallas Cultural Center in Dallas. She served on the board of National Performance Network/Visual Artists Network 2008-15 and was Chair from 2012-2014. In 2016, Meek was selected to be a Fellow in the Intercultural Leadership Institute and also became a Voting Member of Alternate Roots, a national artist service organization.
Vicki Meek currently spends time as Chief Operating Officer and Board Member of USEKRA: Center for Creative Investigation, a non-profit retreat for creatives in Costa Rica founded by internationally acclaimed performance artist Elia Arce. She is also Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson’s at-large appointment to the Arts and Culture Commission and the Public Art Committee. Meek is represented by Talley Dunn Gallery in Dallas, Texas.
“Vicki Meek.” Talley Dunn Gallery, 2022, https://talleydunn.com/project/vicki-meek/#:~:text=In%20addition%20to%20having%20a,an%20online%20performing%20arts%20magazine.
“Artist Vicki Meek Brings a Tranquil and Uplifting ‘Love Letter to the Black Community’ to the Nasher.” Dallas News, 7 Feb. 2021, https://www.dallasnews.com/arts-entertainment/visual-arts/2021/02/03/vicki-meek-brings-a-tranquil-and-uplifting-love-letter-to-the-black-community-to-the-nasher/.
BRUCE GREEN
Bruce Greene is one of the legitimate heirs to a cowboy kind of art legacy that traces its beginning back to Charlie Russell. It is a legacy that is tied hard and fast to a familiarity and feeling for ranch life reality and based on a bedrock of artistic accomplishment.
Way out in West Texas on historic ranches such as the JA and the Four Sixes, Bruce has discovered and tapped into a deep reservoir of cowboy reality. He has enough artistic inspiration to last a lifetime.
Bruce has seen the sun come up between his horse’s ears on the backside of those big Panhandle pastures. It is this privileged perspective that enables him to show us, through his art, the authentic essence of the contemporary cowboy. There will come a time when the cowboys of today will look at Bruce Greene’s art and smile at the memory of the way their world once was.
Bruce was elected to membership in the Cowboy Artists of America in 1993 and has served terms as president in both 2002 and 2013. He has served as the president of the Cowboy Artists of America Joe Beeler Foundation in 2019. He has been honored to receive numerous awards in sculpture, paintings and drawings in the exhibits of the Cowboy Artist of America. He was very pleased to receive the Ray Swanson Memorial Award for his painting “When Freedom Isn’t Free” in 2007 and “In The Brazos de Dios” in 2012. Bruce received the Traditional Cowboy Artists Association award for a work best representing the cowboy in 2009 for painting and 2010 for sculpture. He was inducted into the Texas Cowboy Hall of Fame in 2018 located in Ft .Worth, Texas. At the 2018 Prix de West, he received the Donald Teague Award and is honored to be the Bolo artist for 2019.
In 1991, Bruce and wife, Janie, restored an 1883 farmstead outside of Clifton, Texas, where they continue to enjoy the beauty and the people of the Texas hill country. The old house is regularly filled with the sounds of family and friends. Their three children, with their spouses and nine grandchildren, know it as a home away from home.
If you would like to view his website click here http://www.brucegreeneart.com/
(n.d.). Insight Gallery. Bruce Greene – Artist Biography – Insight Gallery. Retrieved March 30, 2022, from http://insightgallery.com/artist-biography.php?artistId=325127&artist=Bruce+Greene&type=