Studio Artist
Anthony Thompson Shumate, a multimedia artist and designer, has an MFA in Sculpture from the University of Houston (2005) and a BFA from the University of Texas in San Antonio (2001). He is the recipient of several arts and advertising awards including a 2006 New Works Fellowship for Emerging Artist from the former Cultural Arts Council of Houston/Harris County, an ArtPix Grant for Las Pozas: Steps and Falls, a CD-ROM produced in partnership with photographer/videographer Rob Ziebell, six ADDY Awards from the American Advertising Federation, and two Bronze Quill awards in excellence in design.
Shumate is a working artist in Houston, where he pursues contemporary sculpture. In work that combines corporate design and contemporary art aesthetics, Shumate creates a subversive commentary on the modern American social landscape. It is unimportant to the artist if the audience is fully in tune with all intellectual, artistic, and sociopolitical aspects of the work, but rather once having seen the work, audience members begin to participate in the commentary or issue that the work itself addresses.