The Zachary Watson Memorial Education Scholarship is an annual award given to an artist using technology in their work, who is looking to further their higher education.
Each year on March 14th, Pi Day, one promising young artist/technologist is recognized with free and unrestricted access to Gray Area's workshops and intensive certification programs, and an honorary scholarship to Gray Area's Artist Incubator for a full year.
Applications are due by March 4, 2024.
Past Recipients
2023 - Chia Amisola
2022 - Seira Uchida
2021 - Olivia Cueva
2020 - Miriam Hillawi
2019 - Joty Dhaliwal
2018 - Anastasia Victor
2017- Irene Alvarado
2016- Yiliu Shen-Burke
2015- Matthias Dörfelt and Enrico Borba
Sha Hwang
Eric Rodenbeck
Jon Christensen
Marfa Levine
The scholarship exists to honor the memory of Zachary Watson, our friend and colleague. Friends and family continue to support this memorial scholarship to award a scholarship each year to an artist to support their media arts practice.
The scholarship is held and administered by Gray Area, a 501(c)3 Non-Profit Organization. Donations made through the link below are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law, and will be directed towards the Zachary Watson Memorial Scholarship.
Zachary Watson was a creative coder with strong interest in data visualization, emergent behavior, mapping, and learning new things. He worked on the overlap between code and design, building interactive and procedural graphics.
Zach suffered severe brain injuries in a traffic collision on July 28, 2014. In an effort to honor Watson's enduring love of math, his life support was removed on Saturday August 16th, 2014 at 3:14 p.m., a time intended to symbolize the mathematical constant pi.
Zachary Watson was known for creating works such as the Stamen Design map of Silicon Valley’s private shuttle network that gained attention in the transportation planning world in 2012. He most recently worked as an Exploratorium employee.
