The College of Arts and Sciences is delighted to announce that John Fields has accepted the position of Curator for the Abroms//Engel Institute for the Visual Arts (AEIVA). John is an artist, curator, educator, and filmmaker. We are fortunate to have John as a member of the College staff and our community.

An alumnus of the UAB Honors Program, John received a BA in Art Studio in 2003 and an MFA in Painting from the University of New Orleans in 2007. Over the past 13 years, John's artwork has been exhibited nationally and internationally and has appeared in numerous publications. In 2007, he won the ArtVoices Magazine Emerging Artist Exhibition Competition and served as an Artist in Residency at the University of Innsbruck in Austria. Since then, John has exhibited extensively, producing seven solo exhibitions in as many years and garnering nominations for both the Luis Comfort Tiffany Award and the Catherine Doctorow Prize for Contemporary Painting. As a painter, John is represented by beta pictoris gallery in Birmingham.

John brings 10 years of experience teaching fine arts at the university level. He has taught for the UAB Department of Art and Art History as a credentialed instructor since 2008, teaching drawing, design, and graphic design. Recently, alongside UAB Associate Professor Jessica Dallow, John developed and taught a seminar for the UAB Honors Program exploring the theory and practice of contemporary performance art.

In addition to his painting and teaching, John is currently in post-production on his first feature-length documentary film After the Dream. Co-directed by Fields and produced by UAB Media Studies Director Michele Forman, After the Dream follows the lives of five students at Holy Family Christo Rey High School in Ensley, AL, as they struggle to escape an impoverished community.

John's career as a fine arts curator began at the University of New Orleans. After curating numerous exhibitions for commercial and university galleries in New Orleans and Birmingham, John was appointed Interim Director of the UAB Visual Arts Gallery in 2011. During his tenure John produced 18 exhibitions for the Gallery. Highlights from these exhibits include Bob Adelman: The Children's March and The Alabama Project (co-curated by UAB Professor Cynthia Ryan), both of which have gone on to become national travelling exhibitions. John's exhibition Pete Schulte: A Letter Edged in Black was recently named one of the best exhibitions of 2013 by BURNAWAY.