[Ed. Note: Jennifer Gunter King, Leslie Wingate, Kathy Dixson and Sarah Hagenbush Jones contributed to this article.]
Two LITS employees, Randy Gue and Davis Husk, have been honored with 2019 Creativity & Arts Impact Awards by Emory’s Center for Creativity and Arts. Sponsored by the Emory College Center for Creativity and Arts (CCA), the awards are presented annually to individuals in the Emory and Atlanta community who support development, accessibility, inclusion, and innovation in the arts.
Randy Gue was recognized for his contributions that support the arts and his efforts to preserve non-traditional art in and around Atlanta. As curator of modern political and historical collections at Emory’s Rose Library, Randy has expanded the Rose’s collections in a multitude of important directions, many of which touch on the arts, These include collections that document the contemporary art, punk rock, photography, and LGBT communities in Atlanta.
Please read these articles to find out more about Randy’s work.
http://news.emory.edu/stories/2016/04/er_profile_randy_gue/campus.html
http://news.emory.edu/stories/2014/08/emag_rainbow_chronicles/campus.html
Since these articles were written, Randy has added many more important materials to the Rose Library such as the records of Art Papers, Atlanta Celebrates Photography, and the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, collections of local television program “The American Music Show” (where RuPaul first got started) and radio show “Revolution Rock,” the papers of playwright and activist Rebecca Ranson, and the Jack Stewart papers. Jack Stewart was one of the first photographers to chronicle graffiti art in New York City subways.
Randy also holds arts-related events each year, including this past fall’s “ART PUNK DIY”conversation with Kosmo Vinyl, who is famous for his work with the influential punk band, The Clash. Last year Randy organized a very successful “Create Your Own Culture” DIY fest here on Emory’s campus and this March he will hold his second DIY fest at the Visual Arts Building using the Rose’s innovative collections as inspiration. Randy also uses his budget at Emory to sponsor events in the Atlanta community including the Southern Fried Gay Pride Trans PWR Fest, the Steel Wheels graffiti art exhibit, and events at Atlanta Celebrates Photography’s annual festival, and others.
Davis Husk received the undergraduate student award in recognition of his contributions to Emory’s campus. He has worked as an intern on the Campus and Community Relations Exhibitions Team since he was a freshman, when his early responsibilities focused on maintaining the exhibits, galleries, and storerooms as well as some fabrication and installation work. The team was quickly impressed with his reliability, flexibility, intellectual curiosity, and initiative and added content development for exhibitions to his roles and responsibilities. In researching topics, selecting materials, outlining the stories, and writing label copy, he has demonstrated strong scholarship, excellent analytical skills, and creativity.
Davis serves as a student advocate and helps the team understand how to best connect its work with the interests of a diverse student body and to create exhibits aimed at a student audience. To enhance the program, he has conducted numerous interviews and surveys to collect and analyze student needs and wants. He is also a founding co-chair for the Emory Libraries’ student ambassador program. In this leadership role he has already recruited a group of students who will volunteer to enhance the libraries’ events and exhibitions.
This fall, Davis worked to add more interactivity between the exhibits and students on Level 1 of the Woodruff Library. His goal was to break through the static of information and make real connections to help students appreciate the exhibits. He is also helping to mount an upcoming exhibit of student poetry inspired by the punk rock collection in Rose Library.
A native of Calhoun, GA. Davis will graduate this May with a degree in political science.
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