Mary Laube Awarded 2025 Individual Artist Fellowship in Visual Arts 2D

Mary Laube, a Knoxville-based painter and educator, has been awarded a 2025 Individual Artist Fellowship in Visual Arts (2D) by the Tennessee Arts Commission. The fellowship recognizes professional artists in Tennessee whose work contributes to the state’s cultural vitality.

Laube, an associate professor of painting and drawing at the University of Tennessee, is known for richly layered abstract compositions. Her work reflects on how objects accumulate meaning across time, space and shifting power structures. Drawing on imagery from folk art, textiles and ornamentation, her paintings abstract these references into forms that oscillate between illusion and artifice.

“In painting, the picture plane carries the promise of spatial expansion, an implied horizon with limitless possibility,” Laube said. “Yet the physical surface antagonizes that illusion, asserting its truth as a flat surface. Within this plane, my work questions how objects accumulate meaning across time and space as they are placed in various contexts. Through the abstraction of historical objects my paintings give form to the de-territorialized conditions of a globalized and colonized world.”

Laube’s work often includes references to pattern and fabric. Her painting “Burial for the Stars” marks a shift toward incorporating more Korean visual references, with garments patterned with traditional motifs floating within a shallow space and framed like a painting within a painting.

“Pattern shows up a lot in my work with many references to textiles introducing a kind of softness into the paintings that can otherwise feel rigid,” Laube said.

As a tenured Associate Professor of Painting and Drawing at the University of Tennessee, Laube said her roles as artist and educator are deeply connected.

“Being at a research institution means my roles as artist and educator are deeply connected,” she said. “I enjoy learning and I like to teach in response to the discoveries I’m making in the studio. That shared energy with students moves me forward in my own pursuit to understand my work more fully.”

In Laube’s painting “A Sweeter Rose a Softer Sky,” geometric abstraction collides with figuration. The work, which recalls a flag or a vessel, was shaped through an intuitive, layered process.

“While it looks calculated and planned, my process is fundamentally intuitive; the final forms are more found than designed,” Laube said.

In June 2024, Laube held her first solo exhibition at Morgan Lehman Gallery in New York City’s Chelsea arts district. The exhibition was titled “I Will Name Myself in the Dark.” She previously held a solo exhibition at Ortega y Gasset Projects in Brooklyn, New York, in 2021.

Laube said the fellowship comes as demand for her work is increasing.

“I’m thrilled about the momentum my work has right now. The challenge is scaling my studio capacity to meet it,” she said.

The Individual Artist Fellowship award will allow her to fund a professional studio assistant through 2026, an investment she said will support her ability to produce more complex works, prepare proposals and focus on the creation process.

 “I’m excited for what’s next,” Laube said. “This fellowship is not only an honor—it’s a tangible step toward building a sustainable, expansive future for my work.”

She said persistence is essential for artists seeking visibility and funding.

“Being visible requires you to keep putting yourself out there. I apply to so many things and face rejections regularly,” she said. “However, the ‘yeses’ I do receive are transformative. Writing proposals is challenging but my perspective deepens each time I am asked to articulate my work in new ways.”

Laube is currently working on new large-scale paintings, ink drawings and a series of lithographic prints. In August, she will participate in a group exhibition at Stove Works in Chattanooga, opening August 1, where she will also give an artist talk. This fall, she will present a drawing-based solo exhibition at Ground Floor Contemporary in Birmingham, AL.

Born in Seoul, South Korea, in 1985, Laube received her B.F.A. from Illinois State University and her M.F.A. from the University of Iowa. She has exhibited in solo and group shows across the U.S. and internationally. Her work has been featured in publications including White Hot Magazine, Dovetail Magazine, Panorama: Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art, and Maake Magazine. She is also a past recipient of fellowships and residencies from Yaddo, the Wassaic Project, the Vermont Studio Center and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.

Visit Laube’s website to see more of her work.