College of the Arts to host Annual SPARK Awards Ceremony

The UL College of the Arts will be hosting it’s Annual SPARK Awards ceremony on Thursday, March 14, 2024. The ceremony will begin at 6:00 PM at the LITE Center, located at 537 Cajundome Blvd, in Lafayette, LA. A reception will follow the award ceremony.

Please RSVP for the event at: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/2024-spark-awards-ceremony-tickets-775721452747

Steven Oubre 76’ will be awarded this year’s SPARK Lifetime Achievement Award. The SPARK Lifetime Achievement Award honors alumni and members of the community who have made great strides to advance the arts in Louisiana and across the country. He joins the ranks of our previous SPARK honorees; A. Hays Town, Elmore Morgan Jr., Joe Stewart, George Rodrigue, Keith Sonnier, Dicky Landry, Eddie Cazayoux, Herman Mhire and others.

Steve Oubre has over 40 years of experience in managing projects as Principal-In-Charge of a wide range of award-winning building types, including ecclesiastic buildings and campus master plans, schools and universities, museums, medical and healthcare facilities, restaurants, office buildings, recreation centers, and most recently New Urbanist developments along the U.S. Gulf Coast. In his role as lead architect and designer, Oubre combines energy and creativity with experience in the construction process to obtain his signature structures. He represents the versatility and imagination that is an integral part of the firm’s approach and has applied an extensive knowledge of Master Planning, progressive regional design, and emotional sensitivity to the environment into nationally respected places of endearment.

Also, the College of the Arts will also be awarding two additional SPARK awards this Spring semester.

Professor Emerita Susanna Garcia will be awarded SPARK Lifetime Faculty and Staff Award. Garcia joined the faculty of the University of Louisiana School of Music in August 1990. She held the Louisiana Board of Regents/Ruth Stodghill Girard Endowed Professorship (2000–2021), and for many years, served as Coordinator of Keyboard Studies and as Scholarship Coordinator for the School of Music. During her 31-year tenure she taught applied piano, group piano, piano pedagogy, lectured in the Interdisciplinary Humanities program, and directed the Pedagogy Lab Program, an internship program for piano pedagogy students. She retired from the university on May 30, 2021.

Hailey Quick ‘16 will be awarded the SPARK Rising Alumni Award. Hailey received her Bachelor of Fine Art in Printmaking from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette in 2016 and her Master of Fine Art in Printmaking from Kansas State University in 2018. Quick is currently Assistant Professor of Art at Emporia State University, in Kansas. Hailey’s work is influenced from her upbringing in rural South Louisiana. Personal struggles with trauma, along with her background in science, guide her image making. Utilizing both the figure and native Louisiana animals in her compositions, Hailey’s lithographs and etchings depict a complex personal narrative through a surreal lens. In 2017, Hailey was awarded the ArtSpark grant, where she collaborated with the Children’s Museum of Acadiana to create an interactive exhibit. In 2019, she was awarded the Making the Leap Scholarship, where she worked as a NEH consultant assisting small historical societies better their professionalism through the AASLH!s StEPs program. Making the Leap is part of the "Chapman Center Engagement Scholarship”, and a National Endowment of the Humanities Grant . In 2022 she worked as an instructor and Program Coordinator for an inner-city Chicago public school with the Community Outreach Grant for Columbia College Chicago.Her work has been featured in the publications: The Hand: Issue 19, Issue 27, Issue 28; California Printmakers Society: Variation on a Theme; Exclamation! Magazine Issue No. 5; Pulse Magazine "Inner Nature” Issue; and Kansas State University’s Seek Magazine Issue Fall 2020. Her work has placed 1st and 3rd in the "2019 New Impressions” and 3rd in the 2020 “New Impressions” graduate competition, hosted by Speedball, 1st in “Printmaking in the Rockies and the Great Plains”, and has exhibited in multiple locations across the United States.

Michael Eble
Assistant Dean, Communications, Events, & Exhibitions
UL Lafayette, College of the Arts
(320) 288-8389
michael.eble@louisiana.edu