School of Art Assistant Professor Alex Macias recently completed an artist-in-residency with the Wassaic Project in New York.
“The beauty of spending a month in a residency with complete strangers, is that you tend to walk away with work you’re proud of (and not so proud of), and friends for life,” Macias posted on his Instagram account. “I know that I’ll be heading back to Tucson with a fresh crop of ideas to explore in my own studio. It’s also just been a dream spending time in New York, both in the city and upstate. I don’t exaggerate when I say that this career path has given me more than I could’ve ever expected and imagined. As I grow older, I become more aware of what life has handed me and I’m truly humbled. Life is surreal sometimes.”
The Wassaic Project, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, invites emerging contemporary artists, filmmakers, writers, and more to their residency programs – a community of artists — which includes visiting artist lectures, monthly artist presentations, studio visits, and 24-hour access to private studio spaces.
- Later this summer Macias and Aaron Coleman will participate in Son de Allá y Son de Acá, hosted by four Albuquerque galleries, brings together 60 Southwest artists.
- “Everything and Nothing at Once,” a 2021 Macias project funded by the Confluencenter for Creative Inquiry, has been digitally archived in the University of Arizona Libraries’ Special Collection. Macias, who was raised in the Rio Grande Valley, Texas, created two-dimensional works that navigate the artist’s own Mexican-American identity, physical and sociological divisions along the U.S. / Mexico border, and the ever-shifting contemporary American political landscape within a pandemic.
- Macias also had work featured last winter in West Issue 156 of New American Paintings, the 2021 Review of 40 Artists in the Western United States You Need to Discover.
- Macias featured in four Texas exhibitions from Sept. 2020.
- Artist website
