The Dodd Galleries at the Lamar Dodd School of Art is thrilled to announce the Margie E. West Prize, an annual prize given to an esteemed alumni from the Lamar Dodd School of Art, inviting the artist to create a new exhibition for the Marjorie Eichenlaub West Gallery. The inaugural recipient of the prize, John Douglas Powers, will present a site-responsive kinetic sculpture and video installation that will be on display from March 4 to April 2. Powers graduated with an MFA from the Lamar Dodd School of Art in 2008, working closely with Larry Millard in the sculpture department.

“John continues to be a pensive, listening individual,” Millard wrote to us about Powers. “He is always engaged with what others are saying, then digesting it, thinking about it, and rolling around in his mind what he hears, sees, and feels. He always has challenged himself to understand; by consequence, he continues to explore new territory with his inspiring work as an artist. He is one of the best!"

John Douglas Powers was born in Frankfort, Indiana in 1978. His sculptural work has been exhibited nationally at venues including Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, The MIT Museum, The Mariana Kistler Beach Museum of Art, The Huntsville Museum of Art, The Wiregrass Museum of Art, The Alexander Brest Museum, The Masur Museum, The Gadsden Museum of Art, Jonathan Ferrara Gallery, Brenda Taylor Gallery, The Georgia Museum of Art, The Vero Beach Museum of Art and Cue Art Foundation. His videos and animations have been screened internationally.

Powers studied art history at Vanderbilt University and earned his MFA in sculpture, with distinction, at The University of Georgia's Lamar Dodd School of Art. His work has been featured in The New York Times, World Sculpture News, Sculpture Magazine, Art Forum, The Huffington Post, Art in America, The Boston Globe and on CBS News Sunday Morning. He is the recipient of the 2016 Guggenheim Fellowship, the  2013 Virginia A. Groot Foundation Award, a Joan Mitchell Foundation MFA Grant as well as a Southeastern College Art Conference Individual Artist Fellowship, an Alabama State Council on the Arts Fellowship, and the Margaret Stonewall Wooldridge Hamblet Award. Powers currently lives and works in Knoxville, Tennessee and is Associate Professor of Sculpture and Time-Based Media at The University of Tennessee.

The Lamar Dodd School of Art is grateful for the support for our programming and exhibitions in the Marjorie Eichenlaub West Gallery, which is supported by the Marjorie Eichenlaub West Gallery Endowment Fund. Margie’s contributions to the arts will be part of her lasting legacy. She will always be remembered as a voracious collector with a keen eye and unbridled passion for the arts.  
 
Margie served on the boards of The High Museum, the Georgia Museum of Art, and was a long-time member of The Forward Arts Foundation and a founding member of the Ceramic Circle of Atlanta. Her love of the arts was shared and passed down to her family, as her granddaughters attended Lamar Dodd School of Art. 

Find more information on John Douglas Powers' exhibition and artist talk here. 

Image: Installation view of John Douglas Powers, Haliades (three units) wood, steel, and electric motor, 20 in. x 100 in. x 100 in. each, 2012