John Fields
Senior Director
AEIVA 233
(205) 934-8562
Education:
- B.A., University of Alabama at Birmingham, Studio Art
- M.F.A., University of New Orleans, Painting and Video
An alumnus of the UAB Honors Program, John received a B.A. in Art Studio in 2003 and an M.F.A. in Painting from the University of New Orleans in 2007. Over the past 13 years, John's artwork has been exhibited nationally and internationally and has appeared in numerous publications. In 2007, he won the ArtVoices Magazine Emerging Artist Exhibition Competition and served as an Artist in Residency at the University of Innsbruck in Austria. Since then, John has exhibited extensively, producing seven solo exhibitions in as many years and garnering nominations for both the Luis Comfort Tiffany Award and the Catherine Doctorow Prize for Contemporary Painting.
John brings 12 years of experience teaching fine arts at the university level. He has held an adjunct faculty appointment in the UAB Department of Art and Art History since 2008, teaching drawing, design, computer graphics, the B.F.A. capstone course, and overseeing AEIVA student internships. John has also developed and taught a seminar for the UAB Honors Program exploring the theory and practice of contemporary performance art alongside UAB Associate Professor Jessica Dallow.
John's career as a fine arts curator began at the University of New Orleans. After curating numerous exhibitions for commercial and university galleries in New Orleans and Birmingham, John was appointed Interim Director of the UAB Visual Arts Gallery in 2011. During his tenure, John produced 18 exhibitions for the Gallery. Highlights from these exhibits include Bob Adelman: The Children's March and The Alabama Project (co-curated by UAB Professor Cynthia Ryan), both of which have gone on to become national travelling exhibitions. John's exhibition Pete Schulte: A Letter Edged in Black was named one of the best exhibitions of 2013 by BURNAWAY.
John accepted the position of first Curator for the Abroms Engel Institute for the Visual Arts in 2014. Since then, he has curated over a dozen exhibitions for AEIVA; highlights include the popular WARHOL: Fabricated, Yacoov Agam: Metamorphic, Beverly Fishman: Another Day in Paradise, David Sandlin: 76 Manifestations of American Destiny, and Jessica Angel: Facing the Hyperstructure which John developed alongside AEIVA Founding Director Lisa Tamiris Becker.