BOONE—Jody Servon, an associate professor of art and director of the Smith Gallery at Appalachian State University, has been selected as the Sharpe Chair of Fine and Applied Arts.

The Sharpe Chair, an appointment lasting a total of seven semesters, is made possible through an endowment established by R.Y. and Eileen Lackey Sharpe to honor a member of the arts faculty and to insure the development of an arts program of quality at the Hiddenite Center, a folklife and cultural arts educational and exhibition center located in Hiddenite. In addition to teaching, the Sharpe Chair is responsible for arts programming at the Hiddenite Center.

“I am very interested in continuing to explore how art and culture infuses our everyday lives,” Servon said about the appointment, “As the Sharpe Chair, I hope to serve as a bridge between the university and Hiddenite by working with community members, colleagues and the next generation of artists, educators, musicians, designers, historians, writers and more to develop and produce culturally enriching programs.”

Servon received an MFA degree in new genre from the University of Arizona and a BFA in visual art from Rutgers University in New Jersey. She currently serves on the advisory board for the Turchin Center for the Visual Arts and was a cabinet member for the Elsewhere Museum in Greensboro and the Center for Craft, Creativity and Design in Asheville.

Servon’s art projects include installations, drawings, photographs, sculptures, video and social experiments. Her work has appeared in exhibitions, screenings and as public projects in the U.S., Canada and China. Servon has participated in residencies at Vermont Studio Center, Atlantic Center for the Arts, the Contemporary Artists Center and the Super G Experiential Residency and she was a conceptual artist in residence for the Town of Clayton in North Carolina in 2012.

She has received multiple awards including two fellowships from the North Carolina Arts Council. Articles and reviews about her work have appeared in The New York Times, Sun Sentinel, The Palm Beach Post, The Miami Herald, Arizona Daily Star and The Winston Salem Journal. Servon’s work was featured in New American Paintings Issue 70, Artful Dodge Issue 50/51, and selections from Saved appeared in Issue 74 of AGNI Magazine and in the Winter/Spring 2014 edition of Lunch Ticket.

Servon also curates exhibitions focused on contemporary art and was a curator at the Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art in Florida. Exhibition reviews have appeared in Artnews, South Florida Times, Palm Beach Daily News, The Miami Herald, Neural Online and El Pais.

About Appalachian State University

As a premier public institution, Appalachian State University prepares students to lead purposeful lives. App State is one of 17 campuses in the University of North Carolina System, with a national reputation for innovative teaching and opening access to a high-quality, cost-effective education. The university enrolls more than 21,000 students, has a low student-to-faculty ratio and offers more than 150 undergraduate and 80 graduate majors at its Boone and Hickory campuses and through App State Online. Learn more at https://www.appstate.edu.

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