James Pate

American

(not assigned)Dayton, Ohio, USA

BiographyJames Pate
Dayton OH

James Pate is an award-winning artist, born in Birmingham, Alabama, but raised in Cincinnati, Ohio. Pate's art education is largely a result of growing up in a very rich artistic environment. During primary and middle school, Pate was a fixture at a neighborhood arts center called The Arts Consortium. He attended high school at the School for the Creative and Performing Arts, where he was awarded a scholarship to take accredited evening courses at the Art Academy of Cincinnati during his senior year.

His work has been exhibited in a number of galleries and museums, including the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, TN, and the DuSable Museum in Chicago, IL. He has received countless commissions from a diverse array of entities, including the Duke Energy Convention Center, Cincinnati, Oh, and the prestigious law firm, Wilmer Hale, Washington, DC.

James Pate, is a past winner of the highly competitive Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award grant and a two-time recipient.

**2024**
James Pate, Artist’s Biography
jamespate3@gmail.com
937-422-8150

Without a doubt, James Pate is one of the most striking artists to emerge from the Midwest. During his primary years he received public attention and buyers for his art. Labeled gifted, he instinctively understood how to compose two-dimensional space with very uncommon and mature draftsmanship ability. Pate further evidenced this natural skill later in his development when he created and dubbed his signature style, Techno-Cubism. James was born in Birmingham, AL but raised in Cincinnati, OH where he attended the School for the Creative and Performing Arts. He received the prestigious Corbett Award, which earned him a scholarship to attend the Art Academy of Cincinnati during his senior year in high school. His art education is largely a result of self-discipline, dedication, and consistent projects that refined and propelled his already potent aptitude to a professional level of quality.
Pate is an innovative multi-stylist whose work has been exhibited in a number of select galleries and museums, including the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, OH, J.B. Speed Art Museum in Louisville, KY, Rosa Parks Museum at Troy University in Montgomery, AL, National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, TN, and the DuSable Museum in Chicago, IL. His creations are in the corporate art collections of Cincinnati Bell, Atlanta Life Insurance Company, and Central State University, to name a few. He has received countless commissions from a diverse array of entities, including the Cincinnati Reds MLB Franchise, Kentucky Fried Chicken Corporation, Dayton Art Institute, and Dayton Power and Light, Inc.

James is a past winner of the highly competitive Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award grant and a two-time recipient of the Montgomery County Individual Artist fellowship. In 2010 he won Best of Drawing, Best of Painting, and Best of Show at the nationally competitive Black Creativity Juried Art Exhibition at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, IL—an unprecedented ruling. He is the 2015 Individual Artist recipient of the Ohio Arts Council Governor’s Award for the Arts, which is awarded annually to a single Ohio artist whose work has made a significant impact on their discipline locally, statewide, regionally, or nationally.

Pate is highly regarded for his unparalleled artistry as a muralist and his many murals adorn an assortment of private and public spaces. One of these highlights is a 170’ x 12’ public-art piece for the City of Dayton which is published in the coffee table book Walls of Heritage, Walls of Pride, the first book to feature murals created exclusively by African American artists in cities across the country. Another standout is Pate’s ArtWorks Cincinnati 44’ x 7’ Wall of Queens scratchboard mural displayed at the Duke Energy Convention Center. This intricate public-art piece composed of nearly 300 individual scratchboard panels was voted CityBeat Cincinnati’s Best Queen City Mural in 2018.

James has earned a solid reputation as an art educator. For over a decade he served as an adjunct staff member at Dayton’s Colonel White High School for the Arts teaching advanced drawing and painting to students pursuing careers in visual art. He has completed artist-in-residence programs at the Dayton Art Institute and in several primary and high schools throughout southern Ohio, and has led a myriad of workshops, training intensives, master classes, conference sessions, and professional development opportunities throughout the country. He is the 2013 recipient of the Dayton Art Institute’s Pamela P. Houk Award for Excellence in Education.

James Pate currently lives and works in Dayton, OH where he’s in the studio diligently engaged in fine art production. Additionally, Pate is the co-owner of Black Palette Art Gallery and is a member of the design team at Display Dynamics, Inc., a full-service design-build firm, assisting with design concept development projects ranging from permanent museum installations to public art structures.

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