Department of Visual Arts Printmaking student receives 2017 ArtSpark Grant

Department of Visual Arts Printmaking Student Hailey Quick (BFA in Studio with concentration in Printmaking Fall 2016) has received a 2017 ArtSpark grant.

Since 2014, the Acadiana Center for the Arts (AcA) and Lafayette Economic Development Authority (LEDA) offer ArtSpark, an Individual Artist Funding Program. The purpose of ArtSpark is to directly support artists in Acadiana, especially those with otherwise limited opportunities, to expand their bodies of work as a professional and offer outreach to the community. These awards offer assistance to emerging, mid-career, and mature artists for specific, short-term projects.

Quick’s project goals are two fold – to collaborate within the community and create separate but connected bodies of work with dinosaurs as the subject. Ten lithographic prints on paper will be exhibited at the AcA Fall or Winter 2017. “I will be commissioning Marais Press, a professional printmaking editioning press to pull the prints. Marais Press is located in the Department of Visual Arts at the ULL and headed by Brian Kelly.”

Quick will also work with staff and artists at the Children’s Museum of Acadiana to create large scale interactive murals. Guests can explore concepts of paleontology, biology and geology all conveyed through sensory (sights, sounds, and textures) and role play.

“We’re designing this exhibit to be an immersive play world of dinosaurs. We want to transport our guests in time and space to the Cretaceous Period where they can be the dinosaur; they can feed the dinosaur and (hopefully) ride a dinosaur,” explains Jo Breakfield, Children’s Museum of Acadiana’s Director of Museum Operations. “And Mrs. Hailey “The Dino Queen” will help us do just that. She is a perfect partner for us. She is an encyclopedia of dinosaurs blended with the all the imagination and artistry to make our newest romper room reality.”

Image credit: Printmaking student Hailey Quick.