Debra Edgerton is an Assistant Professor in the School of Art at Northern Arizona University. Her work speaks to issues concerning identity, perception, race politics, and environmental justice. Ms. Edgerton received MFAs at the San Francisco Art Institute and Vermont College in Interdisciplinary Art.
Ms. Edgerton has received multiple honors and awards for her art highlighted by the Edgar Whitney Memorial Award, TWSA Master Status Award, and Master status through the National Watercolor Society. She spent a residency in Venice, Italy and a fellowship in Osaka, Japan. The fellowship led to an invitation to present on the topic of race and culture at Kansai University. Diversity is key to Ms. Edgerton’s scholarship. She was in a groundbreaking Exhibition entitled Cinema Remixed and Reloaded: Black Women Artists and the Moving Image Since 1970 at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston and Spelman College. One of her paintings is in the permanent collection of the Historically Black Colleges and Universities.
Ms. Edgerton received a 2022 Scholarly and Creative Activity Award Grant, a 2022 McAllister Fellowship, and a Research Associate position with the Museum of Northern Arizona. Her current work examines freshwater ecosystems in the Colorado Plateau, their community relationships, and their correlation to human communities of color.
Edgerton’s works on display at the Sedona Art Center are from a presentation entitled
A Cautionary Tale: Re-adapting Morrison’s The Bluest Eye into Visual Storybook. The works are a reimagined version of Morrison’s Bluest Eye in picture book format emulating the concept of the traditional children’s fairy tales of the Brothers’ Grimm days of cautionary tales.
