WINNER OF ELIZABETH AND MALLORY FACTOR PRIZE FOR SOUTHERN ART ANNOUNCED

The Gibbes Museum of Art has announced that photographer and digital-montage artist Stephen Marc of Tempe, Arizona, has won the 2009 Elizabeth and Mallory Factor Prize for Southern Art and the ten-thousand-dollar cash prize that accompanies the award. The Factor Prize aims to acknowledge an artist whose work demonstrates the highest level of artistic achievement in any medium while contributing to a new understanding of art in the South. Artists were nominated for the prize online at www.factorprize.org through January. In March, seven panelists narrowed the list to six finalists that included Marc, Lonnie Holley, Ross McElwee, Kathryn Refi, Edward Rice, and Mike Smith.

Marc’s current project, Passage on the Underground Railroad, explores the network of routes and safe points by which escaped slaves reached freedom. While working on the series, Marc says “he became committed to learning about southern culture and heritage, from slavery through the civil rights struggle.” Marc received his BA from Pomona College in 1976 and his MFA from Tyler School of Art at Temple University in 1978.