Dear MCAD Community,
Please join the MFA Program in congratulating the following first-year MFA students for winning our 2024 MFA Merit Award Scholarships & MFA 2020 Fund Award.
Spring 2024 MFA Merit Awards of $2,000 each:
- Vivian Lu
- Sophia Marcus
MFA 2020 Fund Award of $1,250:
- Yi Wang
We also want to thank Cameron Downey and Magdalena Mora, who together took on the task of co-jurying these awards, based on all MFA first-year students' Mid-Program Review work installed in the MFA Gallery in recent weeks. Our jurists wanted all to know how thoroughly impressed they were with the MFA first-year students' work, that deciding between and amongst the many students whose "strong sense of themselves and their styles within their practice...was evident in their final presentations" was not a simple process, and that the ambition, innovation, and distinct strengths of the awardees' works were also notable. From Cameron and Maggie: "We thank them for trusting us with the task of deeply considering and delving into their work."
Cameron Patricia Downey is an anti-disciplinary artist and environmental scientist from North Minneapolis, Minnesota whose practice oscillates between photography, film, body, sculpture, curation and otherwise. The incidental, the precarious and the misremembered are central to this work which strives to archive, unfurl, make-altar-of and bring fantasy to the Blues of Black life and relation. Downey graduated from Columbia University in 2021 with a double concentration in visual art and environmental science. Downey’s art has been exhibited by HAIR+NAILS, Minneapolis; Engage Projects, Chicago; Aronson Gallery, New York; Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien, Berlin; Kemper Museum, St. Louis; Macalester College Law Warschaw Gallery, St Paul; as part of Midway Contemporary Art’s Off-Site program; M+B Gallery, Los Angeles; and Museum of Contemporary Art, Santa Barbara. They were the 2023 recipient of the Carolyn Glasoe Bailey Foundation's MN Art Prize and are a recent artist in residence with the Walker Art Center's Moving Image department, Loghaven Artist Residency and Second Shift Studio Space of Saint Paul.
Magdalena Mora is a Minneapolis-based illustrator, designer, and art educator. She's illustrated numerous award-winning books including Stephen Briseño's The Notebook Keeper, Claudia Guadalupe Martínez's Still Dreaming / Seguimos Soñando, and Elana K. Arnold's The Fish of Small Wishes. Her work has been recognized by The New York Times, the American Library Association, and the Chicago Public Library, among others.
Thanks to all the MFA students, faculty, mentors and community members who helped make MFA Mid-Program Reviews a success, and congratulations again to our awardees!
My best,
Sarah