In February 2021, Texas Vignette awarded our first ever artist grants to 5 deserving women artists. This grant initiative came in place of 2020’s regular programming, the annual Texas Vignette Art Fair, as a way to continue supporting women artists in need during the COVID-19 pandemic. The requirements needed for submission included that the artist be based in Texas, identifies as a woman, and is willing to participate in engagement opportunities with Texas Vignette’s broader audience. Renowned artist and curator, Vicki Meek (who originally planned to curate the fair in 2020), acted as juror for the grants, selecting five artists out of the nearly 140 applicants. Each of the artist grant recipients received a $2,000 grant and the opportunity to exhibit their work in a pop-up exhibition on May 14th - 15th, 2021 in Deep Ellum.

“There were so many artists whose work warrants this grant but alas, I had only five I could select. The decision was difficult but ultimately I chose works that stayed with me after three times looking at all the submissions. All of the artists I selected I felt were exploring an aesthetic that they thoroughly owned and embraced with confidence.”

- 2021 Artist Grant Juror Vicki Meek

Vignette Artist Grant & Pop-up Juror 2021

Vicki Meek (vickimeekart.com)

Vicki Meek, a native of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is a nationally recognized artist who has exhibited widely. Meek is in the permanent collections of the African American Museum in Dallas, The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Paul Quinn College and Norwalk Community College in Norwalk, Connecticut. She was awarded three public arts commissions with the Dallas Area Rapid Transit Art Program and was co-artist on the largest public art project in Dallas, the Dallas Convention Center Public Art Project. Meek was selected as one of ten national artists to celebrate the 10th Anniversary of the Nasher Sculpture Center with the commissioning of a site-specific installation. In addition, Vicki Meek is an independent curator and writes cultural criticism for her blog Art & Racenotes (http://art-racenotes.blogspot.com) and Dallas Weekly. With over 40 years of arts administrative experience that includes working as a senior program administrator for a state arts agency, a local arts agency and running a non-profit visual arts center, Vicki Meek retired in March, 2016 as the Manager of the South Dallas Cultural Center in Dallas, Texas, a full-service African-centered center that is a division of the City of Dallas Office of Cultural Affairs. She served on the board of National Performance Network 2008-15 and was Chair from 2012-2014. Meek is currently a full-time artist and COO of USEKRA: Center for Creative Investigation in Costa Rica, a retreat founded by Elia Arce.

Artist Grant Recipients 2021

Haydee Alonso (haydeealonso.com)

Haydee Alonso is a multidisciplinary artist based in Juarez and El Paso with a BFA in metals and sculpture from the University of Texas at El Paso and an MFA in jewelry and metal from the Royal College of Art. Born in Mexico and the United States border region, Alonso was forced to alternate between cultures and customs in an infinite attempt to connect. This led to an exploration of creative solutions in her work for divided spaces where she facilitates interaction instead of laying out a line that does not allow it.

Rehab El Sadek (rehabelsadek.com)

Rehab El Sadek is an interdisciplinary artist based in Austin, Texas, working at the intersection between conceptual art, Islamic architecture, and language. El Sadek, who is of Sudanese ancestry, was born in Egypt and earned a BFA from Alexandria University before immigrating to the United States. Her work uses light, shadow, memory, and the Arabic language to conceptualize meditative journeys through personal past and the ancient world, and explore themes of immigration, belonging, communication, and language. The largest influence on her work is the rich history of her native country and ancient civilizations from which she

Tammy Melody Gomez (soundcloud.com/tammy-melody-gomez)

Tammy Melody Gomez is a Mexican American, Texas-born writer, interdisciplinary artist, and creative producer based out of Fort Worth, whose poems, essays, and micro-fiction are published in numerous journals and anthologies. For the past thirty years, Tammy’s focus has been curating and producing literary events; mentoring, teaching, publishing younger writers; and performing her original works in non-traditional spaces. These text and movement-based performance art pieces address social realities such as domestic violence, environmental racism, and the impact of mass incarceration on families of color. Her work is categorized as political, eco-feminist, radical, sensual, and genre-defying.

Lisa E. Harris (lisaeharris.com)

Lisa E. Harris is an independent and interdisciplinary artist, filmmaker, creative soprano, performer, composer, improviser, writer, singer/songwriter, and educator from Houston, Texas, with a BM from the Mannes College of Music and an MM from the Manhattan School of Music. Recognized by the Huffington Post as “one of fourteen artists transforming Opera,” Harris’ work resists genre classification as she focuses on the energetic relationships between body, land, spirit, and place. Using voice, theremin, movement, improvisation, meditation and new media to explore spatial awareness, relationality, panoptical surveillance and sonic profiling, she maintains a focused concentration on healing in performance and living.

Ann Johnson (solesisterart.com)

Ann Johnson is an interdisciplinary artist and educator born in London, England, raised in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and currently living and working in Prairie View, Texas. Johnson received a BS from Prairie View A&M University, where she is now an Assistant Professor of art and an MFA with a concentration in printmaking from The Academy of Art University in San Francisco. Johnson’s recent works use found images and experimental printmaking techniques on various objects and surfaces to explore prejudices and stereotypes against Black and Native American communities.

Revisit the Pop-Up

Click on the assets below to view the installation, see a full listing of included works, and read the artist’s statements.

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