Ken Smith Wins Coast Guard Art Program Award

Each year the United States Coast Guard recognizes one artist from among that year’s many submissions to the Coast Guard Art Program (COGAP) to receive the coveted George Gray Award for Artistic Excellence. This year’s recipient is University of Hartford MFA in Illustration graduate Ken Smith (MFA 2007) for his painting, Air Station Savannah, depicting AET2 Taylor Anderson (Avionics Electrical Technician) pausing in her work aboard the HH-65 Dolphin helicopter at Coast Guard Air Station Savannah, near Savannah, Georgia.

Potential Coast Guard artists apply for acceptance into the COGAP program, and if accepted, are then allowed to submit works for possible inclusion in the Coast Guard’s Permanent Art Collection. The 2009 additions to the collection include 34 works by 19 artists. Of these, one work is selected to receive the George Gray Award for Artistic Excellence. Smith’s painting, Air Station Savannah, was granted this honor for 2009. A participant in the Coast Guard Art Program for the past two years, Smith was one of only six artists who were chosen for official Coast Guard Artist deployment in 2008, from which the painting Air Station Savannah was created.

Smith is an Assistant Professor of Graphic Design at Radford University in Radford, VA. He holds a BFA from the University of Tennessee, an MA from Syracuse University and a MFA from the University of Hartford. He is available for commissions and portraits. To see more of Smith’s work, visit : http://www.kensmithhistoricalart.com