UAB sculpture professor honored with SECAC Award of Artistic Excellence

Stacey M. HollowayStacey M. Holloway, associate professor of sculpture at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, has been recognized with the SECAC Award of Artistic Excellence.

SECAC is a national nonprofit organization devoted to education and research in the visual arts. The award recognizes an artist or group whose sustained creative activity within the last two years is considered exemplary.

Holloway is a "visual storyteller," a mixed media artist, sculptor and fabricator who works within a variety of media, including drawing, printmaking, sculpture and ceramics. Through the exploration of storytelling and ethology, she creates works that communicate a universal societal connectivity and constructs sculptural stills that represent anxieties and fears that collide with a world of ambiguous subconsciousness. Her mixed media installations are created from a series of parts, collections and recycled objects that are appropriated and combined with traditional carving, woodworking, casting and fabricated structures.

Holloway's works have been exhibited throughout the Midwest, South and East Coast. At UAB, Holloway teaches in the College of Arts and Sciences' Department of Art and Art History, where she is the BFA program coordinator.

"It is an honor to receive this award and to be recognized for my past achievements," Holloway said. "I will be utilizing this achievement as motivation to keep making new work for a variety of upcoming solo exhibitions."

SECAC, formerly the Southeastern College Art Conference, promotes the study and practice of the visual arts in higher education on a national basis. SECAC facilitates cooperation and fosters ongoing dialogue about pertinent creative, scholarly and educational issues among teachers and administrators in universities, colleges, community colleges, professional art schools and museums, and among independent artists and scholars.

Founded in 1942, SECAC provides advocacy and support for arts professionals and engenders opportunities for the exchange of scholarship and creative activities through an annual conference and publications. Though founded initially as an organization of artists, scholars and arts professionals from the Southeastern states, SECAC has grown to include individual and institutional members from across the United States and around the world, becoming the second largest national organization of its kind. SECAC sponsors an annual fall conference that provides members with a forum for the exchange of ideas and concerns relevant to the practice and study of art.