The Current’s Inaugural awardee, Darrell McKinney, and final juror, Cristina Martinez, will discuss their individual roles and experience for the inaugural year of The Current, An Artist Award.
They will engage in intimate dialogues about this past cycle of the program.
Spots for this event are sold out!
Meet Darell McKinney
Darrell McKinney is a Tacoma-based interdisciplinary artist. His practice explores the intersections across design, art, and architecture. The work speaks to how design can be utilized to explore the complexities of politics, race, and social infrastructure through the interconnectedness of history, people, and places.
He received a Master of Design from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His work has been featured in exhibitions at EXPO (Chicago) and internationally at Salone Del Mobile (Milan), Spazio Rossana Orlandi (Milan), and the Venice Architecture Biennale. He was the recipient of fellowships and awards such as the Greg Kucera & Larry Yocom Fellowship Award (2022), A Tale of Today Emerging Artist Fellowship for the Richard H. Driehaus Museum (2019), Hilltop Lasting Legacy Fellowship (2020), and the Design Council Award (2018).
Meet Cristina Martinez
Cristina Martinez is a contemporary visual artist based in Seattle, WA. Her career started in fashion school before she explored self-expression through painting. Cristina’s work is rooted in telling the often-overlooked stories of Black and Brown people, encouraging them to water themselves to bloom and grow.
Cristina’s work has been part of numerous solo and group exhibitions in Seattle and Los Angeles such as Flowstate, Mothership Gallery (Seattle, 2018), Two Sides to Every Story (Los Angeles, 2020), Band of Vices Mescaline (Los Angeles, 2021), BOTHO Art Collective (Los Angeles, 2022), Diptych (Seattle, 2022), Forest for The Trees (Seattle, 2022). Cristina has created original works of art for global companies and brands, including the World Trade Center, Nordstrom, Netflix, Disney, BET, and many more.