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LAWRENCE -- Roger Shimomura, internationally acclaimed artist and University Distinguished Professor of Art at the University of Kansas, has been awarded the Chancellors Club Career Teaching Award for 2002.
The Chancellors Club, established in 1977 by The Kansas University Endowment Association, is KUÿs major-donor organization. The clubÿs annual Career Teaching Award honors a senior KU faculty member who exemplifies the universityÿs commitment to outstanding teaching. KU faculty members, students and alumni submit nominations for the $5,000 award. Shimomura receives the award tonight at the clubÿs 25th annual meeting at the Kansas Union ballroom.
Shimomura said that every semester, as he stands in front of a new classroom filled with young artists, he strives to serve as a role model.
"I want to share all the things that go along with being an active, productive and exhibiting artist," he said. "My most important goal is to put students on track so their art and values in everyday life are similar."
In letters nominating Shimomura for the award, colleagues praised him for the fresh ideas he embraces in his visual and performance art classes.
"Shimomura has never lost his Îedgeÿ; his considerable success has simply raised the energy and value he brings to the classroom," wrote Peter Thompson, professor of art and former dean of the School of Fine Arts. "He has pushed our curriculum in fresh directions. He continues to attract the very best of our students and is highly supportive of their development."
Tanya E. Hartman, assistant professor of painting and drawing at KU, wrote: "Students trust his instincts about their creative work and are empowered to risk self-revelation and to make daring technical innovations. Roger becomes a true partner in his studentsÿ creative lives and imaginations."
Internationally acclaimed as a socio-political artist, Shimomura has won prestigious grants from such groups as the National Endowment for the Arts, the Civil Liberties Public Education Fund, and Art Matters Inc. He has received the McKnight Interdisciplinary Fellowship, the Kansas Arts Commission Artist Fellowship and the National Endowment for the Arts/Rockefeller/Warhol Foundation Diverse Visions Regional Fellowship, among others.
Shimomura has held more than 100 solo exhibitions and more than 300 group exhibitions in the United States, Canada and Japan. His work is included in the permanent collections of large art museums across the country, including the National Museum of American Art (Smithsonian), and in more than 700 private and corporate collections around the world. His paintings have been reproduced in books and magazines and on television. He also is in demand as a visiting artist, having lectured at more than 160 art schools and museums across the country.
When he first became a professor, Shimomura said he taught in order to support himself while making art. Since then, his reasons have changed.
"Being an artist is one of the most satisfying activities that one could be involved in," he said. "Teaching allows you to share that with others and to shape others to allow them to enjoy that same quality of life."
Shimomura began his teaching career at KU in 1969, after receiving a bachelorÿs degree in commercial design from the University of Washington and a master of fine arts degree in painting from Syracuse University.
KU Endowment is an independent, non-profit organization serving as the official fund-raising and fund-management organization for KU. Through 2004, KU Endowment is conducting KU First: Invest in Excellence, the largest fund-raising campaign in KU history, with a goal of $500 million in funds for scholarships, faculty support, programs and capital projects.
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