Galveston Artist Residency: The 2021-2022 Artists in Residence Announced

Manuel Alejandro Rodríguez-Delgado (Bayamón, Puerto Rico, 1982) is a Puerto Rican artist formerly based in Los Angeles, CA. The son of a master woodworker, he was exposed at an early age to the saint carving traditions of the island.  His work has been shown in the mainland United States and Puerto Rico. He was the recipient of the two most notable artist awards offered in Puerto Rico: the Lexus Grant for Artists and the Oriental Bank Group Prize for Emerging Artists. These esteemed awards allowed him the means to pursue his MFA in sculpture at the School of The Art Institute of Chicago, where he was the recipient of the LeRoy Nieman Foundation Fellowship. Rodriguez’s work has been shown in numerous venues, most notably the Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico, San Juan, PR; Sullivan Galleries, Chicago, IL; The Gallery of the University of Sagrado Corazón, San Juan, PR; the Roswell Museum and Art Center, and The Anderson Museum of Contemporary Art, both in Roswell, NM.

Jean Shon is an artist working with installation, photography, and text. Originally from La Marque, Texas, she frequently explores notions of hometown, memory, identity, il/legibility, and loss through family history and archives. She focuses on connecting fragmented pasts to the present in order to construct non-linear, complexly layered narratives.

Jean holds an MFA from the University of California-Irvine and a BS in Architecture from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her work has been shown in various galleries throughout Southern California.

Andrew Wilson is a multimedia artist working in the intersections of ritual and funerary rights honoring the deceased, the ways objects accumulate spirit particles, and how these collide to open portals to different dimensions. His work is at once beautiful with an attention to craftsmanship and repulsing in its graphic subject matter. He wants to create an extra moment of confoundment for the viewer to contemplate their relationship to the work and the imagery and histories it evokes. He received his BFA from Ohio Wesleyan University in 2013 with a concentration in Jewelry/Metals and his MFA from the University of California, Berkeley in 2017. Wilson’s work has been in many galleries and institutions including: The Berkeley Art Museum, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, SOMArts, and the Museum of the African Diaspora. He has received such awards and honors as: the Jack K. and Gertrude Murphy Award, an Emergency Grant from the Foundation of Contemporary Arts, the Carr Center Independent Scholars Fellowship, the McColl Center and more. He has also worked with Carrie Mae Weems on The Spirit that Resides in Havana, Cuba alongside the Havana Biennial and The Future is Now Parade for the opening of The REACH in Washington D.C. His work has been collected by Michigan State University and the University of New Mexico.