COVINGTON-RHODE

SENIOR PRIZE

The Covington-Rhode Senior Prize is made possible through the generosity of UNM Alumna Dr. Patricia Covington and Shari Rhode. We are grateful for their love of art and confidence in the future of our outstanding UNM Department of Art scholars.

The faculty of the UNM Department of Art are pleased to announce the Covington-Rhode Senior Prize will be awarded in the spring semester of 2024.

Previous Winners:
2019: Cynthia Marris
2020: Carlos I. Gabaldon, Elleott Leigh Herrera, Vir Kaur Khalsa, Emma Sobel, Lucas Zuniga
2021: Ashleigh Abbot, Lacey Chrisco, Katherine Conley, Jiayi Liang, Sergio Stryker
2022: Audrey Montoya
2023: Andrew Michael Joseph Jogi, Anran Zhang

Covington-Rhode Senior Prize Winners Spring 2023

Andrew Michael Joseph Jogi

Andrew Michael Joseph Jogi is a queer, Asian-American artist from Albuquerque, New Mexico, whose creative practice centers around exploring the intersections of identity and how that impacts the way a human body is perceived by society, intimate partners, friends, and family. He is inspired by his own experiences as a queer person of color and is motivated by a desire to understand the way his identity has influenced his navigation of the world. He seeks to create work which challenges contemporary societal expectations as well as normalize queer existence and find kinship and commonality within shared experiences.

Anran Zhang

Anran Zhang is a visual artist whose work primarily focuses on architecture, landscape, and black and white photography. Originally from China, she will obtain her BFA degree with departmental honors from the University of New Mexico in 2023. Zhang’s artistic vision centers on the exploration of the relationship between inner emotions and the external world. Through her art, she aims to create a bridge between the two and invite the viewer to delve deeper into their own emotions and experiences.

Covington-Rhode Senior Prize Winner Spring 2022

Audrey Montoya

Covington-Rhode Senior Prize Winners Spring 2021

Ashleigh Abbott

Lacey Chrisco

Katherine Conley

Jiayi Liang

Sergio Stryker

The Covington-Rhode Senior Prize in Art at The University of New Mexico recognizes the outstanding achievement of our undergraduate art students during their senior year, to promote professionalism and excellence in the visual arts, and motivates and encourages all art students to achieve their fullest potential throughout their years in the program. As a competitive award, the competition will be open to graduating seniors (undergraduates) earning a degree in the Art Department who have a studio practice and will give them experience exhibiting their artwork and participating in a professional evaluation. The recipient(s) will be recognized at the College of Fine Arts spring convocation.

The Award

The Covington-Rhode Senior Prize will be awarded to the individual senior artist or artists of superior promise and demonstrable ability.

Eligibility

Eligibility is limited to students majoring in Art at the UNM Department of Art who will receive their undergraduate degree between the fall and spring semester of the current academic year. Failure to meet this requirement will disqualify any participant or award winner. Students who have entered once cannot qualify again.

Applying for the Senior Prize

All seniors wishing to participate in the competition must email their completed application to the UNM Department of Art office, at art@unm.edu on Friday, March 22, 2024. Incomplete applications will not be considered. Students will receive a receipt of the application by email.

The online application will be submitted by attaching two PDFs

1. One PDF is the application form available on the APPLY link on this webpage. This is a writable PDF, please download it and fill it out.

2. The second PDF should include the following 3 parts:

-Your portfolio with a title page with your name, 10 images, including the title, date dimensions, and materials of the work. Please provide links to YouTube or Vimeo for video or time-based media.

-A 100-word Artist Statement

-One to two-page Resume

Selection of Student Participants & Prize Winners

The UNM Art faculty will review and score the online applications and score each submission. All students will be considered equally, regardless of specialization or major. The faculty will exercise their decision based on material evidence in the application, as well as a creative activity. Criteria employed in selecting nominees are creativity, craftsmanship, and potential for professional development.

The students with the most votes will move on to the next level of the selection process, which will be judged by the Covington-Rhode Prize Jury Committee. The committee will be comprised of five professors in art (will rotate annually), one of whom teaches the Studio Art Capstone Class. Students will be notified of their status in April.

The selected finalists will be notified and will be asked to make a formal presentation of their original work in a one-week exhibition for review in late April/ early May at the John Sommers Gallery. The students will draw for space and install their own portion of the exhibition. On the exhibition’s opening day, the Covington-Rhode Award winner(s). The winner or winners will be honored in an awards ceremony at the exhibition, as well as at the CFA Spring Convocation.