Recent MFA and Dodd Alumna Lauren O'Connor-Korb has been awarded the prestigious International Sculpture Center's Outstanding Student Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award for 2019. Lauren O'Connor-Korb earned an MFA in 2019 from the Lamar Dodd School of Art.

Using humor and skepticism as tools to interrogate the world around her, O’Connor-Korb creates objects that question their own inherent form and function. Her current focus is what role machines play in distancing people from the materiality of their environments. Her work has been shown nationally in San Francisco, Atlanta, Miami, and New York. She is from the San Francisco Bay Area and lives and works in Athens, Georgia.

The International Sculpture Center (ISC) established the annual "Outstanding Student Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award" program in 1994 to recognize young sculptors and to encourage their continued commitment to the field. It was also designed to draw attention to the sculpture programs of the participating universities, colleges and art schools and recognize those institutions whose students routinely excel. The award program's growing notoriety has resulted in an exceptional number of participating institutions; over 139 universities, colleges and art school sculpture programs from four countries for a nominated total of 325 students from which 11 were ultimately chosen.

A distinguished panel made up of Ebitenyefa Baralaye, a ceramicist, sculptor, and designer from Detroit, MI; Melanie VanHouten, founder and Artistic Director of Josephine Sculpture Park in Frankfort, KY; and Alison Wong, first-generation Chinese American artist, curator, and educator of Detroit, MI selected 11 recipients and 18 honorable mentions.

Award recipients will participate in an exhibition (location and dates TBD), and each artist's work will be featured in the September/October 2019 issue of the International Sculpture Center's award winning publication, Sculpture, as well as on the ISC’s website at www.sculpture.org.