2022 Krider Prize for Creativity
2022 Krider Prize Recipient: Dr. Chip Thomas
The UCDA Foundation established the Krider Prize for Creativity in 2009, as a way to memorialize a friend and past president of UCDA, John Krider.
As designers we draw our inspiration and influences from many fields and experiences. While we focus on our roles as designers, seeing how others solve similar problems, honing our craft to promote education and our institutions, we sometimes need a little unexpected juice. To keep it simple, the UCDA Foundation called that juice “creativity” and wanted to honor it wherever it might be found.
Dr. Chip Thomas (pictured above), aka jetsonorama, is a photographer, public artist, and physician who has been working in a small clinic on the Navajo Nation since 1987. There he coordinates the Painted Desert Project which he describes as a community-building dialog that manifests as a constellation of murals painted by artists from the Navajo Nation as well as from around the world.
Chip’s own public artwork consists of enlarged black and white photographs pasted onto structures along the roadside primarily on the Navajo Nation. His motivation is to reflect back to the community the love they’ve shared with him over the years.
Chip was a 2018 Kindle Project gift recipient and in 2020 he was one of a handful of artists chosen by the UN to recognize the 75th anniversary of the UN’s founding. Selected artists are to generate work that contributes to the envisioning and shaping of a more resilient and sustainable future. The UN writes “...right now we are facing the greatest health challenge to the human race in a century. COVID-19 has revealed that a virus can affect not only our physical health but also our ability to cope with the psychological impact in its wake.” Thomas spent 2021 working collaboratively to create art that is a community-based response to the pandemic.
Left: Dr. Chip THomas. Photo courtesy of Dr. Chip Thomas. Right: Dr. Chip Thomas (center) was awarded the Krider Prize at the UCDA Design Conference by UCDA Foundation president David Whaley (left) and Krider Prize for Creativity Committee chair Jean Bevier (right). Photo by Matthew Lester.
Immediately following his session, Chip signed posters of Rose Hurley with her great-grandson Edzavier printed by conference sponsor Mingo Press. A limited number of unsigned posters (left) are available for $30 (includes shipping) from the UCDA Foundation at ucda.com/forms/chip-thomas-poster. Conference photo by Matthew Lester.