Stuttgart will host artist Melvin Rice
The Arts Center of the Grand Prairie at Stuttgart will host a reception for artist Melvin Rice from 5:30-6:30 p.m. Nov. 28.
Rice is the featured artist in the center’s main gallery through mid-December. The exhibit features the artist’s use of acrylics and other art mediums in a variety of landscape, portrait and inspired works, according to a news release.
Rice was born in Pine Bluff. After graduating from Watson Chapel High School, he served in the Army National Guard and received an honorable discharge. He received his licensed in the Church of God in Christ in 1982. In 2001 he became an ordained elder in the Full Gospel ministry. He is the father of four children and has one grandson, according to the release.
A 2012 graduate of the Art Instruction School at Minneapolis, Minn., he has had work published in the Art Illustrator at Minneapolis. He won numerous awards including second place in the Art Instruction School Annual Art Competition 2013, 2012, and 2011.
Also, while attending the school, he was awarded the Blue Ribbons Art Award 2010 and 2012. In 2012, he won the Grand Prize in the school’s annual completion.
Rice has exhibited his work at various art centers and galleries throughout Arkansas as well as Denver, Chicago, and Detroit. At the 2014 Grand Prairie Arts Festival at Stuttgart, he won first place and third place.
In 2013, in the Southeast Arkansas District Fair Art Show at Pine Bluff, he won four first places. He also was recognized in the Guachoya Cultural Art Center at Lake Village and University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff Benefit for the Arts, among other honors.
What inspires him to keep painting, “To inspire people with the beauty that surrounds them in painting charcoal, mixed media, pencil, pen and ink, brush and ink, pastel, watercolors and any other medium,” he said.