Judges

Our Judges this year are dedicated to our world of art! Please meet Nelson Grice, Roscoe Hall and Daniel White!

Nelson Grice was born in Nashville, Tennessee where he learned a love for entertainment and creative expression through the performing arts of choir and stage. He moved to Alabama as a teenager and was captivated by the beauty of the state’s landscape. He became interested in photography, and eventually art school. It was in art school that Nelson found his passion for sculpture. He earned a BFA and an M.Ed from the University of Montevallo and has been teaching in the public schools since 1996. His professional career as a sculptor compliments his role as a teacher. Through hard work and his love for art, Nelson’s sculptures have continued to evolve and grow with each passing group of students. He sees the students as an inspiration. “Teenagers live in an imaginary world,” he says, “and it’s that imagination that inspires me”. Nelson is known for his whimsical and entertaining animal sculptures and paintings. He has had multiple corporate and museum purchases. When the magazine Ceramics Monthly featured Nelson’s work, viewers were encouraged to “look a little closer” in order to “see that the work is about the child living on in the adult.” Nelson’s work is, in fact, inspired by a child’s play of building with toys such as Legos or Lincoln Logs. Through a process of creating his own ‘custom legos’ or components, he then assembles the parts together, and in this way, explores his uninhibited childlike imagination. “Everything is fresh and new each time I come into the studio. I bring out my parts and pieces and just build. It makes me feel like a child again”. It is Nelson’s hope that when you meet one of his pieces it will make you smile, make you laugh, and make its way into your heart and home.
Roscoe Hall, 2023 Birmingham Artwalk Judge
Roscoe Hall is a painter living and working in Birmingham, Alabama. He has been a working chef simultaneously while practicing his craft for nearly 27 years. He received his B.F.A. in photography from the University of San Diego and his M.A. from the Savannah College of Art and Design. Hall’s works have been exhibited at the Ralph Mark Gilbert Civil Rights Museum, Savannah, GA; Graeter Art Gallery, Portland, OR; Lowe Mill Gallery, Huntsville, AL, Scott Miller Projects, Birmingham, AL, James Baron Art Gallery; Kent, CT and the Abroms-Engel Institute for the Visual Arts, Birmingham, AL.
Daniel White, Birmingham Artwalk Judge
Daniel White is director of the Paul R. Jones Museum and The University of Alabama Gallery. He received the MFA in ceramics at Rochester Institute of Technology and the BFA in ceramics from the University of Montevallo. Before coming to Tuscaloosa, he was museum director at Mason-Scharfenstein Museum of Art at Piedmont College in Demorest, Georgia, and museum preparator at the Birmingham (Ala.) Museum of Art. White’s teaching experience at Athens State University, University of Montevallo and Rochester Institute spans courses from ceramics and two- and three-dimensional design, to professional practices and senior capstone seminar. He serves on the boards of directors of the Alabama Visual Arts Network (ALVAN) and Kentuck Art Center. White is the author of numerous catalog essays, including for the artist monograph, Threads and Layers: Sara Garden Armstrong. He wrote the introduction and is the original editor for the volume Grandeur of the Everyday: The Paintings of Dale Kennington (UA Press 2017), and hosts the podcast Postmodern Barbeque for ALVAN.