Archive Mode. Call 54th Annual Montgomery Art Guild Regions Bank Exhibition ended on 9/7/20, 11:59 PM. Call settings are read only. See Current Open Calls

Meet the Juror

Debra Riffe is a native of Tupelo, Mississippi and currently lives in the Birmingham, Alabama area. She earned her BFA from Howard University, College of Fine Arts, in Washington, DC. She is a printmaker and has been a professional graphic designer and illustrator for more than thirty years.

Ms. Riffe has traveled extensively, and lived in Barranquilla, Colombia, South America for five years.

She is the recipient of many awards including an Individual Artist Grant presented by The Cultural Alliance of Birmingham and the inaugural Birmingham Museum of Art Collectors Circle for Contemporary Artist (CCCA) Award. Debra has studied under internationally renowned printmaker and illustrator Barry Moser and she participates in select workshops and classes around the country, biennially.

Her linoleum block prints and woodcuts are included in many collections, both private and institutional, including the Freedom Rides Museum at the Historic Greyhound Bus Station (Montgomery, AL), Dillard University (New Orleans, LA), Athens State University (Athens, AL), Indian Springs School (Indian Springs, AL), the Bluff Park Association Permanent Collection (Hoover, AL), and at the National Historic Landmark 16th Street Baptist Church (Birmingham, AL), to name a few. Spring 2019, Debra successfully taught a beginning level course in printmaking at the St. Clair Correctional Facility (Springfield, AL). The 16-week course was organized under the auspices of the Alabama Prison Arts & Education Project.

Ms. Riffe says this about her printmaking art: “The majority of my compositions depict singular, figurative images of African Americans placed in rural settings of the American South. Individuals are represented at work or at play performing everyday tasks in timeless, solitary, reflective moments; tasks which represent concepts of social status and identity. I appreciate the ordinary and I try to introduce a setting or an experience that the viewer will respond to.”