College of Arts + Architecture

Voice students Christian Souza and DeLenn Rumbolo brought home prizes from the Mid-Atlantic National Association of Teachers of Singing Student Auditions at Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina.

Souza, a student of Brian Arreola, received first place in the Advanced Post-Baccalaureate Classical Tenor, Baritone, Bass division.

Rumbolo, a student of Christina Pier, claimed third place in the Advanced Post-Baccalaureate Classical Treble division.

Lydia Thompson, professor of art, will receive a 2024 National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts Honorary Member Award at the organization’s annual conference in Richmond, Virginia.

For more than five decades, recipients of the Honorary Member Award have been recognized as individuals “whose commitments to creativity, scholarship, activism or professionalism have made transformative contributions to the ceramic arts.”

Associate Professor of Art History Lisa Homann is a key member of a team developing the internationally traveling exhibition “New Masks Now: Artists Innovating Masquerade in Contemporary West Africa.” The exhibition is organized by the New Orleans Museum of Art and supported by a $500,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

CarlosAlexis Cruz, associate professor of theatre, is the 2024 Engaged Faculty Award  recipient as presented by North Carolina Campus Engagement.

Five UNC Charlotte music students are getting a taste of the touring life this academic year through Opera Carolina’s educational outreach program, Opera Xpress.

On the third floor of the Fretwell Building is a new mural — the latest project by students in the mixed-media studio taught by painting professor Maja Godlewska and printmaking professor Erik Waterkotte.

Movement Migration, the dance company founded by Associate Professor of Dance Kim Jones, received two grants from the North Carolina Arts Council, a division of the Department of Natural and Cultural Resources. The two grants, more than $20,000 combined, support both project-based work and company operations.

Several faculty and alumni in the College of Arts + Architecture have been recognized in the 2023 “Best in the Nest” Awards presented by Charlotte independent weekly newspaper Queen City Nerve. Covering a wide range of categories, the annual awards include both critics’ and readers’ picks.

Seven current College of Arts + Architecture faculty members are among recent grant recipients from the Arts & Science Council. They earned Artist Support Grants, which fund professional and artistic development for emerging and established artists to enhance their skills and abilities to create work or to improve their business operations and capacity to bring their work to new audiences.

The 2024 ASC grant recipients are:

The Nouveau Sud Project, the urban circus initiative founded by Associate Professor of Theatre CarlosAlexis Cruz, is a recipient of a 2023 Knight Art + Tech Expansion Fund from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Nouveau Sud is one of 22 Charlotte-based artists and arts organizations to receive funds in 2023.