Mark Bradford, a graduate of California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, was one of seven artists to be honored with the U.S. Department of State’s 2014 Medal of the Arts. The ceremony was held Wednesday in the State Department’s Benjamin Franklin room in Washington, D.C.

In congratulating Bradford, Secretary of State John Kerry said: “When Mark Bradford looks at a city, he sees more than the rest of us do with our untrained eyes. He invariably looks everywhere and he sees art everywhere.

“Mark’s collages and installations – some scavenged, all beautiful – have hung in our embassies in Stockholm and Berlin,” Kerry said, “and each tells a different story about the American experience of class, gender, and race in an urban environment.

“Mark, we join in saying congratulations and thank you for your extraordinary work.”

Born in Los Angeles in 1961, Bradford graduated from CalArts with a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts degree in 1995 and a Master’s of Fine Arts degree in 1997.

From to a State Department write-up:

Bradford is a recipient of the 2014 National Medal of the Arts. Other major awards include The McArthur Fellowship (2009) and the Bucksbaum Award, granted by The Whitney Museum of American Art (2006). Bradford has shown extensively in international and national exhibitions. Recent solo shows include the major touring exhibition Mark Bradford’ presented at the Wexner Center for the Arts, Colombus OH (2010), followed by three other locations in the United States; ‘Merchant Posters’, Aspen Art Museum, Aspen CO (2010); and ‘Neither New nor Correct: New Work by Mark Bradford’, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York NY (2007). ‘Mark Bradford: Sea Monsters’, currently on display at the Rose Art Museum in Waltham MA; will tour to The Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, Netherlands in 2015. Later in 2014 will see the unveiling of a special commission installation ‘Bell Tower’ at LAX Airport, Los Angeles CA. A new body of work will be presented at The Rockbund Art Museum in Shanghai, China in 2015. Selected public collections include The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.