Stephen Towns - Gillies Artist-in-Residence 2025

Renowned American artist Stephen Towns will serve as the inaugural Gillies Artist-in-Residence. His work has been featured in publications such as the New York Times, Colossal. Artforum, the Washington Post, Hyperallergic, Cultured, Forbes, AFROPUNK, and American Craft.

During his residency from March 24 through April 12, Towns will have access to the Gilcrease Collection through The University of Tulsa’s Helmerich Center for American Research. He will meet with local leaders, artists, and historians and tour impactful sites such as the Greenwood neighborhood and Black Wall Street.

Towns was born in 1980 in Lincolnville, South Carolina, near Charleston and now lives and works in Baltimore. Trained as a painter, he received a B.F.A. in studio art from the University of South Carolina and has developed a rigorous, self-taught quilting practice. In 2018, the Baltimore Museum of Art presented his first museum exhibition, “Stephen Towns: Rumination and a Reckoning.”

In 2021, Towns was the first Black artist-in-residence at the Fallingwater Institute, located at Frank Lloyd Wright’s renowned Fallingwater house in Pennsylvania. That same year, Towns was awarded the Maryland State Arts Council’s Individual Artist Award. In 2016, he was the inaugural recipient of the Municipal Art Society of Baltimore Travel Prize.

Towns’ work is in the collections of the National Museum of African American History and Culture and National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.; Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri; Art + Practice in Los Angeles, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Boise Museum of Art in Idaho; the City of Charleston in South Carolina; and the Rockwell Museum in Corning, New York, among many others.

Towns, who will visit with UTulsa students and faculty during his residency, will return for a public lecture on Nov. 5 at the campus’ Lorton Performance Center. Details of that event will be shared at gilcrease.org and utulsa.edu this fall.