Ericka Walker (MFA ’10) to Receive 2023 Alumni Promise Award
Ericka Walker is a School of Art printmaking alumna from the University of Tennessee (MFA ’10). She will receive the College of Arts and Sciences 2023 Alumni of Promise Award on September 29, 2023. Walker, who attended the University of Tennessee after completing her undergraduate degree from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, lives in Nova Scotia, Canada, where she is an Associate Professor at NSCAD University. The Alumni Promise Award recognizes alumni who have demonstrated distinctive achievement in a career, civic involvement, or both. This award is presented to acknowledge alumni who are making a mark early on in their career.
Ericka Walker will also present a lecture at the UT School of Art on Thursday, September 28, 2023, 5:30 pm in AA 109.
Walker’s work was included as part the recent exhibition at the Knoxville Museum of Art “Landfall Press: Five Decades of Printmaking,” December 16, 2022 – April 30, 2023. Some members of our campus community may also be familiar with her exhibition “The Great Experiment,” a series of large prints was exhibited in the Printmaking Showcase Gallery at UT last Spring. Additionally, her work was selected by Sarah Suzuki, curator at the Museum of Modern Art for our alumni exhibition that was held in the Ewing Galley of Art and Architecture as part of the SGC International Conference held on our campus in 2015.
Ericka Walker is one of the most important young artists working with print media today. Last year Ms. Walker was voted by the membership of SGC International to receive their Mid-Career Artist Award. Based on her close examination of American and Canadian colonialism, Walker’s art draws on the vernacular histories of the early and mid-20th century posters to interrogate mythologies that have resulted in the systematic oppression of marginalized and underrepresented people. Raised in rural Wisconsin, her art is also concerned with agriculture and our relationship with the land.
In addition to her work as a printmaker, Walker extends her commitment to a publicly engaged practice through the painting of large-scale murals, which is a natural extension of her work as a printmaker. In all of the murals that she has completed, mentorship of emerging artists was always a significant part of the project (receiving grant funding mainly to pay them as project assistants). These mentorships are part of her efforts to build relationships with the general public who live and work in rural communities.
Her work on murals also extends to a recent project in Milwaukee commissioned by the Milwaukee Art Museum. Working with Curator of Prints and Drawings Nicki Otten, Ericka created a limited edition print in conjunction with Always New: The Posters of Jules Chéret a major exhibition of Chéret’s posters held last summer. Walker was one of 25 artists in Canada selected for the Sobey Art Award longlist in 2019. The annual Sobey Art Award is the pre-eminent prize for contemporary Canadian art. Walker has exhibited her prints widely throughout North America and abroad, with her work finding homes in multiple public collections. Her work appeared recently in exhibitions at the Huron Arts Gallery, San Francisco, CA; the Civic and Cultural Center Numancia, Santander, Spain; the Novosibirsk Graphic Arts Triennial, Novosibirsk State Art Museum, Russia; and the International Print Center, NYC, NY. Walker won the Grand Prize at the 2018 Okanagen Print Triennial in Kelowna, British Columbia.
Her website is: https://www.erickawalker.com/
A short video on her project at Black Rock Editions: https://www.instagram.com/p/CU_AZEWAJM9/
Episode 37 from the international podcast Hello Print Friend: https://helloprintfriend.com/episodethirtyseven-ericka-walker
A Canadian Broadcast Corporation profile on Walker:
https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/1660365891552/
