South Arts announced Charlotte sculptor Nadia Meadows as a 2023 Southern Prize and State Fellowship recipient today.
The regional nonprofit awarded $5,000 fellowships to nine visual artists throughout the South, including Meadows.
Now in its seventh year, the program awards one artist in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee.
Meadows plans to use the funding to create a small model for a “hair-themed playground.”
“[It’s like] a large-scale hot comb that has a swing in between the [comb’s] teeth or a flat iron slide, and you slide down to one side of the flat iron,” Meadows said when describing her hair-themed playground.
Meadows, who often creates art influenced by African American hair, wants to incorporate positive messages into the playground’s design, like “all hair textures matter” and “you are beautiful.”
She also wants the playground to be large “so everybody can have fun.”
Meadows says she looks forward to meeting the other fellows and collaborating on future projects.