2014-15 Featured Scholar

Laurel Robinson named GSW featured scholar

Laurel Robinson, professor of art and Department of Visual Arts chair, has been named Georgia Southwestern State University’s 2014-15 Featured Scholar. President Kendall Blanchard made the announcement this past November.

Robinson’s work away from Georgia Southwestern – range and volume – has been extensive. She has held dozens of exhibitions featuring her work in places like Los Angeles, New York City, Pittsburgh, Australia, China, Israel, and many locales in between; she has been featured in or has authored 15 published works; and Robinson has permanent collections housed at the Cincinnati Museum of Art, the Macon Museum of Arts and Sciences, the Jewish Museum in New York City and in the List College Collection at Columbia University in New York City.

Additionally, Robinson is the founding art director (1997-present) at Camp Ramah Darom, a Jewish children’s camp in Clayton, Ga., and she was President Jimmy Carter’s private art instructor for two years.

Robinson earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting/drawing/art history and a Master of Fine Arts in painting from the University of Cincinnati. With an interest in science, math and sociology, she has done post-graduate work in physics, paleoecology, math, sculpture, psychology, sociology, semiotics, advanced Hebrew, Spanish and the Romanian language at the University of California Los Angeles, the University of Tasmania in Australia, the University of Tel-Aviv in Israel (where she also served as a professor for one year), and Georgia Southwestern.

President Blanchard initiated the Featured Scholar Award in 2008 to recognize, once a year, a GSW faculty member who has made significant contributions to his or her discipline in the form of artistic accomplishment, basic research, writing, publishing, editing, presenting and grant awards. The award recipient is chosen by a committee of faculty members that represent each school and are selected by the Faculty Senate chaired by the past recipient of the award. The award carries a stipend of $500.