Arkansas Tech announces fall artist in residence
RUSSELLVILLE — Jade Hoyer has been selected as fall 2021 Windgate Foundation artist in residence at Arkansas Tech University in Russellville. During her five-month residency, Hoyer will provide leadership for a community mural project, teach a class in the department of art, mentor students and collaborate with ATU faculty and students.
Hoyer’s community mural project is titled Paper Makers. Workshops will teach members of the ATU community and the surrounding area how to make paper from recycled materials, then apply the paper to wooden panels that will become a portable mural.
“The mural will represent the interconnected environment and the Russellville community in a fun and engaging way,” Hoyer wrote in her project proposal. “Paper Makers is an activity suitable for community engagement after a year of social distancing. This project can easily be created outdoors and is inherently hands-on.”
Hoyer will host additional workshops to engage at-risk Russellville-area youth in the project.
“My hope with Paper Makers is to offer a free, artistic experience to as many people as possible, particularly those with limited access to artistic programming,” Hoyer wrote. “Too often, public art takes the form of art to be encountered and appreciated passively, work that is sometimes created by individuals without a narrative connection or investment in the work’s location. The planning of this mural will be created in collaboration with the ATU and Russellville communities and offers exciting potential for community representation and engagement.”
Details about ways in which individuals can become involved with Paper Makers will be announced later this year.
Hoyer is assistant professor of art at Metropolitan State University in Denver, Colorado. According to her bio, she has exhibited her work internationally and has been recognized by organizations such as the Cultural Center of the Philippines and the Minnesota State Art Board. Her work is part of collections such as the Museum at Texas Tech University’s artist printmaker research collection and the Museu da Gravura de Curitiba, Brazil.
“Through a multimedia artistic practice employing installation art, papermaking and printmaking,” Hoyer wrote, “my artistic practice examines constructed social and natural environments, often reflecting my experiences as a multiracial Filipina-American.”
Hoyer holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in studio art from Carleton College in Minnesota and a Master of Fine Arts degree with an emphasis in printmaking from the University of Tennessee.
She is the third artist in residence in Arkansas Tech history. Manami Ishimura (spring 2019) and Tiffany Black (spring 2020) fulfilled that role under the original $100,000 grant the Windgate Foundation made to the ATU Foundation in 2018 to create ATU’s artist in residence program, as well as a summer professional-development program for Arkansas K-12 art teachers.
The Windgate Foundation has since made an additional grant of $610,000 to the ATU Foundation to continue those programs and help create an endowment intended to provide scholarship assistance to students in the ATU Department of Art pursuing educational opportunities in traditional fine arts, studio practices and art education.