July 27, 2009
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As an art major at Vanderbilt, there is no award that is more coveted than the Margaret Stonewall Wooldridge Hamblet Award. The recipient receives $25,000, the means for travel and independent art activity for one year and a solo art exhibition at the Fine Arts Gallery.
The award has been handed out every year since 1984 to a graduating senior art major. People have won the award with paintings, photography, pottery, etc., but never had anyone won with video art.
That was until this year when Carmen Mims, a member of the track and cross country teams, won the prestigious honor with a 10-minute video that she produced.
“I was completely in shock,” Mims said of the honor. “It was the first video I’ve ever done, so that was really exciting to show that my initiative to learn the program and try something new was valued by the judges.”
For years, running and art have been the hobbies Mims has been most passionate about. Because of her love for the two, she has tried to express her running through her artwork, but she was unable to get the results she desired until creating the winning video, which, fittingly, focuses on the obsession people have with running.
“I’ve been trying to express the highs and lows of running for the past few years, but I hadn’t found that right medium,” Mims said. “Finally with video, I was able to get across how running is really an obsession for me and how others could relate their compulsions with running to mine. Running has been a huge factor in my art.”
Vanderbilt art professor Libby Rowe has seen Mims’ work throughout college and has watched Mims try to blend her passion for running with that of art for the past few years.
“Running has been a constant theme in her work,” Rowe said. “I think that finally with the video piece, she found a really successful way to express the feelings that are involved in something that is so important to her life and is so very different in many ways than art. She found a way to bring those two things together, and I think that is what ultimately helped her be successful in the competition.”
Ask any runner and they will tell you running is one of the best times to think. Mims is no different. Some of her best ideas and suggestions for her artwork have come while pounding the pavement as a Vanderbilt student-athlete.
“Running alone has really helped me have that time to myself,” Mims said. “Bouncing ideas off my teammates has been a huge help too. They have probably gotten sick of hearing about all the crazy things I’ve wanted to do, but they are so honest with me. Having a non-art perspective and an honest perspective has been very helpful. Running is definitely a great time for me to get focused and excited about doing my art.”
Before this past January, Mims had focused most of her attention on printmaking and painting. She had entered two other art competitions and wasn’t very successful in either. When she finally picked up a video camera for the first time, she felt an instant connection.
“I had been pretty hooked on printmaking and painting the last two years and then finally I picked up a video camera for the first time and felt I was much more suited for that,” Mims said.
Her ability to pick up video from scratch did not come as a surprise to Rowe, who has seen Mims quickly learn many new things in art over the years.
“She has grown quite a bit,” said Rowe, who taught Mims in photography and digital imaging. “Because the classes I’ve had her in are beginning-level classes, I’ve really seen her start with a new technique or a new process and apply her ideas to that process, which she does really well with, and I think that her video is a good example of that. Just being able to do a very technically proficient project with a new medium is something she is good at.”
Despite Mims’ keen ability to pick things up and instant connection with video art, she had concerns along the way. No concern was larger than that she was putting everything into a form of art she had never done.
“I knew I wanted to do video art, and I was really hoping it would work out because I wasn’t working on much of anything else besides the assignments for the classes,” Mims said. “I really put everything into that video hoping that something wouldn’t go wrong at the last minute.”
With the help of her boyfriend and former Vanderbilt cross country runner, Chris Noll, who did the filming, and her parents who gave her ideas, Mims was able to produce the video through self-taught editing techniques. And instead of something going wrong, it is safe to say everything went better than Mims had expected.
“I think this video was significant in that it really allowed me to express myself visually, and that is why I really like art,” Mims said.
Even though she is leaving the classroom at Vanderbilt after graduating in May with a degree in art and a minor in economics, Mims will enter another classroom in August. The Louisville, Ky., native was accepted to the Teach for America program and will spend the next two years teaching in the Nashville Public School System.
On top of her work in the classroom, Mims will continue to focus on studying ways to improve video art in preparation for the solo art show she will have in Feb. 2011 at the E. Bronson Ingram Studio Art Center.
“I do have a passion for teaching, and I don’t know right now if I’m going to pursue art, education or both,” Mims said. “This will be a great way for me to be doing both and see what I really want to do at the end of two years.”
Mims may not know what direction she wants to go, but right now she has 25,000 reasons to give art a try.
