The Trawick Prize Jury

Selection Panel 

The 2025 competition will be juried by Shannon Leah Collis, Andy Holtin and Dr. Massa Lemu.

Shannon Leah Collis 
Associate Professor of Art at University of Maryland

Shannon Leah Collis is a multidisciplinary artist who creates audiovisual installations and interactive environments that highlight the situated, embodied experience of hearing and seeing. Her work has been widely exhibited across North America and abroad, including solo exhibitions at The Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art, Ursinus College, PA; The Dalton Gallery, Agnes Scott College, GA; Grizzly Grizzly, Philadelphia, PA; and Open Studio Contemporary Printmaking Centre Toronto, Canada. Other collaborations and screenings include projects at the Burrinja Cultural Centre, Australia; the Murray Art Museum Albury (MAMA) Australia, the Walters Art Museum, the Institute of Contemporary Art, Baltimore, MD; and the Currents New Media Festival, Santa Fe, NM). Collis received her Master of Fine Arts at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada. She is currently an Associate Professor at the University of Maryland, where she teaches digital media and sound.
 

Andy Holtin 
Department Chair and Associate Professor of Art at American University

Andy Holtin teaches all levels of sculpture, addressing traditional media as well as installation formats, kinetic and interactive systems, and digital audio and video at American University. His work uses technological systems to create performative objects and interactive installations, incorporating an exploratory range of materials and processes. Holtin currently works as half of the collaborative duo CausalityLabs, pursuing projects that explore mechanisms as a metaphor for human experience and perception. His work has been exhibited internationally at locations including Galerie35, Berlin, Germany; Museo Antropologico y de Arte Contemporaneo, Ecuador; Museo Universitario Arte Contemporaneo, Mexico City; Planetario Alfa Science and Culture Museum, Mexico; and nationally at museums, galleries, and universities from New York to Portland to Florida. Holtin earned his Master of Fine Arts from Virginia Commonwealth University’s Sculpture + Extended Media program.
 

Dr. Massa Lemu 
Associate Professor of Art, Sculpture + Extended Media at Virginia Commonwealth University

Massa Lemu is an Associate Professor of Sculpture + Extended Media. He is a Malawian visual artist and writer whose multi-disciplinary artistic practice takes the form of text, performance, and multimedia installations that are concerned with the contradictions of migration, and the psychological effects of an immaterial, flexible and mobile capitalism on the post-colonial subject. Lemu makes interventions into objects to comment on their social, economic, or spiritual aspects. Sometimes he uses aesthetics of politics to comment on the politics of aesthetics. Lemu earned his Ph.D in visual arts from the University of Stellenbosch in Cape Town, South Africa; his Maste of Arts in painting from the Savannah College of Art and Design; and his Bachelor Education in Fine Art from the Chancellor College University of Malawi Zomba, Malawi.