Crystal Wagner, UTK Alumna, to Receive UTK Alumni Promise Award
Crystal Wagner (MFA ’08) has been selected by the UTK Alumni Association to receive the UTK Alumni Promise Award on Friday September 16, 2022. Although Wagner will be unable to attend tonight’s ceremony, her award will be received members of the School of Art printmaking faculty, Beauvais Lyons and Koichi Yamamoto.
See announcements: https://alumni.utk.edu/s/1341/2/20/interior.aspx?sid=1341&gid=2&pgid=18932
Wagner is a 2008 graduate from our #3 ranked MFA program in Studio Art with a concentration in Printmaking, and has already established herself as a significant artist with recognition of her work through major exhibitions and commissions both in the United States and abroad.
Based in Los Angeles, Wagner is known for her artistic integration of two and three-dimensional forms, alternative use of materials, and hybrid approaches to printmaking, to create large-scale site-specific installations. Notable commissions include an installation for the internationally recognized band The Flaming Lips; a large shadow box for GNU a snowboard company based in Portland, Oregon; a large-scale installation piece for NIKE, presented in the Shrine Auditorium for The KOBE X Blackout Experience; and two installations for Viacom, one of which is a 117-foot piece at their headquarters in Times Square. In 2019 she created a site-specific work on the facade of Belcastel in Aveyron, France. See a video about this project:
More recent projects include a large-scale installation for TOYOTA, and a new large-scale installation for her exhibition titled “Sublime” which opened at Fort Works Art, in Fort Worth TX on July 9th will remain on view through October. Currently her work is featured in the Urban Art Biennale in Berlin, Germany.
Wagner’s work has been featured in The New York Times, Architectural Digest, Artnet, Hi Fructose, Juxtapoze Magazine, Art & Science Journal, Complex Art & Design Magazine, Graffiti Art Magazine, and many more. She was the recipient of an Awesome Without Borders, Awesome Foundation Art Grant and the Sculpture and Installation Category Award Winner of the SEE.ME, Art Takes Paris, international art competition. In 2015, she was awarded a highly coveted Pollock-Krasner Grant. In 2019 Wagner was a recipient of the UTK College of Arts and Sciences Divisional Achievement in Visual or Performing Arts Award.
Art & Object Magazine recently described her work as audaciously creative, “Made of torn plastic birthday party tablecloths stuffed into the openings of chicken wire fencing, these exuberant, boldly colored forms have a robust, eye-popping appeal.”
While her professional record of exhibitions and commissions is notable, anyone who sees her work can appreciate its sheer beauty and invention. The ability of the arts to enrich our lives is evident in her labors.
WEBSITE: http://www.crystalwagner.com