Jurors

Meredith Lynn

Meredith Lynn is an artist, curator, and educator based in Tallahassee, FL. Through her creative and scholarly projects, she researches the impacts of climate change and land management and ownership. Her work has recently been shown at Atlanta Contemporary, the Morris Graves Museum of Art (Eureka, CA), House Guest (Louisville, KY), Austin Peay University (Clarksville, TN), the Wiregrass Museum (Dothan, AL), and the Alexander Brest Gallery at Jacksonville University. She has been an artist in residence at the Jentel Foundation (Sheridan, WY), Kimmel Harding Nelson (Nebraska City, NE), and Signal Fire (Portland, OR). Her curatorial projects have been supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Florida Division of Cultural Affairs, the Indiana Arts Commission, and the Minnesota State Arts Board. She is the curator of the Museum of Fine of Arts at Florida State University where she teaches in the Department of Art.

Tina Ruggieri

Tina Ruggieri has been an Assistant Curator at the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Abroms-Engel Institute for the Visual Arts since 2019. She received her Bachelor of Arts with a concertation in Art History from UAB and is working towards her Masters in Art History with a concertation in Contemporary Art. She has curated shows such as Shona McAndrew: Wednesday Night, Jiha Moon: Chasing Spiriting, and co-curated Quentin Morris and A la carte: A Visual Exploration of Our Relationship with Food.

Daniel White

Daniel White is currently the Director of the Paul R. Jones Museum of American Art, and the Director of The University Gallery at The University of Alabama. Previously, he was the founding Director of The Mason-Scharfenstein Museum of Art at Piedmont College. Beginning his career at the Birmingham Museum of Art, he has been involved in numerous exhibitions in his career spanning from Antiquity to Postmodern; from Folk to Conceptual. He is an active studio artist and contributes to scholarly publications. He holds an MFA from the School for American Crafts at RIT, and a BFA from the University of Montevallo.

Judge

Mario Gallardo is the founder and Executive Director for the Walnut Gallery, a contemporary art gallery, in Gadsden, Alabama. Since 2010, he has curated over 60 exhibitions of regional, national, and international artists for the gallery, each with accompanying cultural programing that is free and open to the community. Mr. Gallardo is also a college art professor and Chair of the Division of Fine Arts at Gadsden State where he oversees the academic departments of Art, Music, and Theatre along with the Wallace Hall Performing Arts Center and the Meadows and Mezzanine Art Galleries. Gallardo received his MFA in Sculpture from the University of Alabama where he was a national alumni fellowship recipient. He is also the recipient of an Individual Artist Fellowship by The Alabama State Council on the Arts for his work in Sculpture and Performance Art.