Steve Parker
Steve Parker is an artist, musician, and curator. He is the recipient of the Rome Prize, the Ashurst Prize (UK), the Tito’s Prize, a Fulbright, and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Parker works with salvaged musical instruments, amateur choirs, marching bands, urban bat colonies, flocks of grackles, and pedicab fleets to investigate systems of control, interspecies behavior, and forgotten histories. His projects include elaborate civic rituals for humans, animals, and machines; listening sculptures modeled after obsolete surveillance tools; and cathartic transportation symphonies for operators of cars, pedicabs, and bicycles.
Parker has exhibited and performed at institutions, public spaces, and festivals internationally. Highlights include the the American Academy in Rome (Italy), Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art (Arkansas), CUE Art Foundation (NY), the Fusebox Festival (Austin), Gwangju Media Art Festival (Korea), the Guggenheim Museum (NY), the Lincoln Center Festival (NY), Los Angeles Philharmonic inSIGHT (LA), the Lucerne Festival (Switzerland), MASS MoCA (Massachusetts), the McNay Art Museum (San Antonio), Rich Mix (London), SXSW, and Tanglewood. As a soloist and as an artist of NYC-based "new music dream team" Ensemble Signal, he has premiered 200+ new works.
Parker has been awarded support from the National Endowment for the Arts, New Music USA, the Copland Foundation, the Puffin Foundation, and the Mid America Arts Alliance. He is curator of SoundSpace at the Blanton Museum of Art, Executive Director of Collide Arts, and a faculty member at UTSA. He holds degrees in Math and Music from Oberlin, Rice, and UT Austin.
Recent works
"Sirens" Brass, plastic, conduit, and recorded voices. 7 x 4 x 4’. 2018.
"Foghorn Elegy" Salvaged brass, hazard lights, steel, electronics, wood, acrylic paint, audio samples of brass instruments, copper plumbing. 2021 Commissioned by The Contemporary Austin with funds provided by the Edward and Betty Marcus Foundation.
"Ghost Box" Salvaged brass, tactical maps, scores on paper, wires, map pins, electronics, audio, and instrument case. 19’ x 8’ x 6” 2018
"Kyrie, eleison" Reclaimed organ pipes, copper plumbing, vinyl tubing, fireplace bellows. 2020 A musical instrument sculpture that facilitates a sonic ritual for up to seven people.
"Tubascope" 5 x 6 x 12’ 2020 This project was commissioned by the City of Ketchum with the support of the Ketchum Arts Commission.
"Self Portrait" Vinyl, plastic lids, proximity sensors, recorded audio, and wires 2020
"Bluescycle" Brass, steel, rubber, aluminum. 14 x 10 x 8’ 2019 Commissioned by the City of Conway Art in Public Places
