Nov. 12, 2003

Contact: Becca Ramspott, School of Fine Arts, (785) 864-5567.

KU professor of painting and performance wins $15,000 award

LAWRENCE -- A distinguished professor of performance and painting at the University of Kansas continues to make his mark in the American art world as a visual artist.

Roger Shimomura recently received one of 10 prestigious Joan Mitchell Foundation Awards out of 60 nominees nationwide. The award recognizes excellence in painting and sculpture, and it carries an unrestricted cash stipend of $15,000.

The New York City foundation was established in 1993 in memory of Joan Mitchell, a celebrated contemporary American abstract expressionist painter. The foundation seeks to demonstrate that painting and sculpture are significant cultural necessities by providing grants, stipends and scholarships for painters and sculptors.

Shimomura has been recognized widely for his paintings, prints and theatre pieces. His work addresses sociopolitical issues of Asian America and often has been inspired by 56 years of diaries kept by his immigrant grandmother. Shimomura has received four National Endowment for the Arts fellowships in painting and performance art, a McKnight fellowship and a Civil Liberties Public Education fellowship. He was the first artist internationally to receive a Japan Foundation grant, as well as the first in the state to receive the Kansas Arts Commission Artist Fellowship in Painting. The Whitney Museum of American Art purchased his "Yellow No Same" lithograph series this year.

Shimomura's personal papers are being collected by the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.

For more information on the award, please contact the art and design departments at (785) 864-4401.