Printmaker and sculptor Imin Yeh is the 2026 Contemporary Art Fellow at 萝莉岛app (UAH) Department of Art, Art History, and Design. She examines everyday objects, such as this film projector, through representation in paper form. UAH received a grant of $10,000 from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation to support the program.
Courtesy Imin Yeh
萝莉岛app (UAH) Department of Art, Art History, and Design has received a grant of $10,000 from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation. The legacies of these two major 20th-century American artists will bring a modern American artist and her work to campus in 2026. UAH is a part of The University of Alabama System.
鈥淭he UAH Contemporary Art Fellow program aims to celebrate diverse and innovative perspectives in art and to stimulate learning for our 萝莉岛app students and the larger community,鈥� said Dr. Laura Lake Smith, assistant professor of modern and contemporary art history at UAH and project director for the grant.
Printmaker and sculptor , associate professor of art and director of Foundational Studies at the School of Art at Carnegie Mellon University, was selected by department faculty and community partners to be the 2026 Fellow.
鈥淭he UAH Contemporary Art Fellow participates in a series of activities across a week, including a public lecture and reception, an exhibition of the work, a workshop with upper-level students, and community engagement activities and tours,鈥� Smith said.
Yeh鈥檚 work will be on display Feb. 20 to March 27 in the UAH Wilson Hall Gallery. More details about her work and the week of programming, March 23 to March 26, will be announced later.
The artist鈥檚 on the Carnegie Mellon website describes her focus:
鈥淚min Yeh is an interdisciplinary and project-based artist working in sculpture, installation, and participatory events. Her projects use Print Media as a technical tool for realizing the ambition of large-scaled work and Print as a conceptual strategy for exploring free, exchange, and craft based economies. The projects utilize repetitive handcraft and mimicry as a strategy for examining the issues around the unseen labor and production that lies behind our many unconsidered everyday objects.鈥�
Along with Smith, the Contemporary Art Fellow Committee includes Kathryn Jill Johnson, department chair and professor of art, painting and drawing; Katie Baldwin, professor of art 鈥� printmaking, and Ilene Galloway, art coordinator for the department.
Smith wrote a grant proposal for the program to the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) in 2024 under the special grant initiative Challenge America, a longstanding NEA initiative designed to extend the arts to underserved communities. Her proposal was granted, but then funding was cancelled to all grantees in February 2025.
In May, the Warhol and Frankenthaler Foundations announced a joint commitment of $800,000 to provide immediate support to the 80 small and mid-sized cultural organizations across the U.S. that had been selected to receive funding through the since paused Challenge America grants. Acting on their shared goal of 鈥渉elping to advance critical, community-based visual arts programs in jeopardy of being cancelled due to financial uncertainties,鈥� the Foundations have provided $10,000 to each grant recipient to enable them to move forward visual art projects that serve vulnerable populations and remote communities.
For UAH, the grant from the Warhol and Frankenthaler Foundations means the continuation of a successful programming series that began with 2021 Contemporary Art Fellow Sun Young Kang, a book and installation artist who uses paper to create physical and conceptual space.
鈥淭he first program went absolutely wonderfully 鈥� packed house, great responses from the community and our students. It raised awareness of what our department at UAH was doing,鈥� Smith said. 鈥淲e are thrilled with this new opportunity.鈥�
For more information visit the for the Visual Arts and the Helen webpages.