Contact: Sasha Steinberg

STARKVILLE, Miss. —A faculty member of Mississippi State’s College of Architecture, Art and Design is receiving statewide recognition.

Dominic Lippillo, an assistant professor of photography in the university’s Department of Art, has been awarded a $4,500 visual arts grant from the Jackson-based Mississippi Arts Commission (MAC).

The MAC Fellowship grant is made possible by continued support from the Mississippi State Legislature, National Endowment for the Arts, Mississippi Endowment for the Arts at the Community Foundation of Greater Jackson, as well as other private sources. For more, visit www.arts.ms.gov.

“Artists of all kinds are the heart of Mississippi’s creative economy,” said Malcolm White, MAC executive director. “They significantly contribute to the economic growth of their communities and our state, and the Mississippi Arts Commission is honored to support their outstanding work.”

Drawing influence from painter Edward Hopper (1882-1967) and writer Raymond Carver (1938-88), Lippillo’s new solo project “Stories We Tell Ourselves” conveys open-ended narratives that are set in non-specific American landscapes. Through depictions of mundane daily happenings, Lippillo seeks to convey visual conversations where loneliness and longing border bewilderment and hope.

An MSU faculty member since 2010, Lippillo earned his Master of Fine Arts in photography from Ohio University in 2009 and Bachelor of Fine Arts in photography from Youngstown State University in 2005. Digital photography and photography survey are among courses Lippillo has taught at MSU.

Lippillo’s work is featured in the permanent collections of the Museum of Photographic Art in San Diego, California, Museum of Fine Art in Houston, Texas, and University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa.  

His work also has been published in the Society for Photographic Education’s journal “Exposure” and Manifest Gallery’s International Photography Annuals Volumes II and IV. A supplement of images accompany Bruce Warren’s textbook “Photography: The Concise Guide.”

Selections from “Stories We Tell Ourselves” currently are on view in the exhibition “Narrative: People, Places and Things” at Black Box Gallery in Portland, Oregon. For additional biographical information, visit www.domlippillo.com.

The Department of Art is part of MSU’s College of Architecture, Art and Design. For more, visit www.caad.msstate.edu.

MSU is Mississippi’s leading university, available online at www.msstate.edu.