ArtsNow is excited to introduce Alexandria Couch, the assistant artist in Phase II of the Park East Project. She is passionate and talented, and we are thrilled to have her on the team. Check out her bio for some insight into her background and what inspires her work.

Alexandria Couch is a senior student at the Myers School of Art at the University of Akron, pursuing a Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting, drawing, and printmaking.

Until college, she was primarily self-taught and gained most of her skills by keeping sketchbooks. This is something she started doing at age four and has maintained ever since and continues to do so avidly.  Because of her admiration for process and skill-building, she has initiated a show at the Myers School of Art to showcase the sketchbooks, processes and talents of professors and students—they are the people who inspire her the most!

The majority of her work explores her experience as a minority, attempting to piece together an identity in unfavorable environments. It is an ongoing battle between self-discovery and breaking through imposed expectations of others through which she must maintain composure. The combination of traditional and found materials helps to emphasize the idea of finding herself through exploration.

She has had the honor and opportunity to win awards for her work starting with her Portfolio Review Scholarship received from Myers upon entry and followed by the 2018 Outstanding Student Gillette Academic Scholarship, the 2018 Gillette Study of Arts Abroad Scholarship to Paris, and the High Arts Festival Runner Up, participant in the 2019 GAR show, the 2019 Academic Scholarship to Venice, and a Studio Academic Scholarship for 2019.