The Meadows Museum honored assistant professor of painting and drawing, Noah Simblist, last week as the 2006 winner of the Moss-Chumley Artist Award for 2006. The $1,500 award is given to an exceptional North Texas artist who has exhibited his or her work professionally for at least 10 years and has been actively involved in the advancement of the visual arts.

Simblist is known for his paintings, which incorporate animation, film and sound components, used to elicit a deeper response from viewers. In a press release, Simblist says that his work seeks to question the identity of painting and drawing, and the way it manifests itself within formal investigation.

“Noah’s presence has been felt at SMU and in Dallas-area intellectual and artistic circles and contemporary art venues,” said Barnaby Fitzgerald, a professor of drawing and painting, and a member of the jury that selected Simblist for the award, in a press release. “His painting is hauntingly playful, structured on isometric visual rhythms. He utilizes the history of decorative isometric motifs’ ambiguity of space as a vehicle for startling revelations of urgent political responsibility.”

Simblist has been teaching at SMU since 2003. He has also taught at Hampshire College and the University of Washington. He has lectured at Harvard, Loyola Marymount, the University of Urbino in Italy and the Nesiya Institute in Israel.

The Moss-Chumley award is given in the memory of Frank Moss and Jim Chumley, Dallas art dealers who made contributions to the North Texas visual arts community during the 1980s. The Chumley Memorial Fund was established 1989 by Moss and the Meadows Museum, and became the Moss-Chumley Memorial Fund in 1991 upon Moss’ death.

Other jury members included Cynthia Mulcahy of the Mulcahy Modern Gallery and Amanda Dotseth, the assistant curator at the Meadows Museum. – compiled by the Daily Campus staff