Visual & Performing Arts

VAPA

2022 LAS Awards

Outstanding Undergraduate Students

Amadea Katz
Outstanding Student in Visual Arts

Amadea Katz was born in 1999 in Colorado Springs, CO. She currently studies at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs and will receive her BA in Visual Arts in the summer of 2022. From the humble beginnings of comic-style drawing, Katz has expanded her practice to include an array of painting, sculpture, live performance and video art exploring femininity, memory and the body. Katz exhibited her first body of work in Specter, a collaborative show at UCCS's Heller Center for the Arts and Humanities, and recently displayed work in The Art Show at the same location. Katz will be featured in several shows in the upcoming months, including Elevate, a group show at UCCS's Galleries of Contemporary Art, and Chronic, a solo exhibition at the Heller Center. Katz currently works as a framer, and plans to have a long, chaotic, nomadic career filling various positions in contemporary art galleries. Katz currently lives and creates in her hometown of Colorado Springs.

Anna Lincoln
Outstanding Student in Theatre
Anna Lincoln is a senior in the Visual and Performing Arts department. She has a passion for sharing stories of the human condition via song, dance, and comedy. Her love for the stage stretches through and beyond traditional plays towards devised and physical theatre, clowning, and burlesque. Due to her extraordinary acting output over her years at UCCS she has earned the Excellence In Theatre Award. From her memorable roles in Peer Gynt, Romeo and Juliet, The Art of Dining, Hair, Medea and A Flea in Her Ear, Anna has showed a depth and breadth of skills in acting and movement. She is a teacher and an entertainer, and has the focus, dedication and drive that will allow her to go far in this business. We are so proud of her achievements and will miss her greatly. Break a leg, Anna!
Emerson Cyrus Olsen
Outstanding Student in Music
Cyrus has been an outstanding student and natural leader for the whole music student body. Centered in violin performance in the VAPA BA Creative Music Performance track, Cyrus has improved dramatically the last few years and performs professionally in the Pikes Peak region. Their capstone research project was a study of physical injury mitigation in instrumentalists, a subject not often addressed among undergraduate music majors who spend hours upon hours every day with their instruments. Their Senior Recital, titled “Folklore Evolutions” was one of the most thoroughly researched and expertly performed in the history of the music program, as well as ripe with several collaborations with their peers. Moreover, as an Anthropology and Music double major their recital interweaved knowledge and practice across both fields with in-depth knowledge and skill. Cyrus helped found the student string quartet, was a member of the Honor’s Scholarship Ensemble and was the VAPA student representative in the VAPA Chair’s Council. Moreover, they were employed as a work study student in the music program for two years, excelling at this position in concert production, marketing, and many other aspects of the music program.