Art League Houston (ALH) is honored to celebrate Dallas-based Artist Vicki Meek as the 2021 Texas Artist of the Year. Recognized as an artist, curator, writer, organizer and arts advocate, Meek’s career embodies the ethos of the Texas Artist of the Year award in her steadfast devotion to both the creation and support of the arts over the years. Meek’s multimedia, interdisciplinary practice focuses on cultural memory, identity, and social issues in relation to the African diaspora, underscored by an underlying hope and emphasis on collective healing. Meek’s exhibition at Art League Houston, The Journey to Me, thematically visualizes her development as an artist through a curated series of three site-specific installations extending throughout the ALH galleries. In a recent Dallas Morning News review by Lauren Smart of Meek’s 2021 Nasher Public installation for the Nasher Sculpture Center, Stony the Road We Trod, Meek states: “I want people to start thinking about the Black community in the affirmative. We didn’t just survive. We thrived in spite of everything.” This sense of hopefulness is highlighted throughout much of Meek’s practice, which prioritizes and supports forgotten, left behind histories and identities. In conjunction with the exhibition, ALH is publishing a catalogue designed by Lindsay Starr chronicling Meek’s history of installation-based work, including color images and a scholarly essay by Lauren Cross, PhD, College of Visual Arts and Design at the University of North Texas.

Meek’s solo exhibition at ALH will serve as a visual exploration of her artistic development over the years. Comprising of an amalgamation of installation-based work, sculpture, printmaking and technology, the exhibition will cite the major influences on Meek’s singular aesthetic and artistic practice, specifically relating to the late Elizabeth Catlett (Meek’s mentor) and African cosmology and spiritual practices.