Oregon Arts Commission Awards Thirteen Artist Fellowships
Grants Recognize Excellence in Visual Arts: Sculpture, Painting,
Photography, Mixed Media and Installation
The Oregon Arts Commission has recognized thirteen Oregon artists with Artist Fellowship awards of $3,000 honoring outstanding work created by artists throughout the state. This year, the program was open to artists involved in the visual arts. In alternate years, artists involved in performing and literary arts may apply.
The Commission's Fellowships assist Oregon artists in the development of their work. Artists may use the $3,000 grants to complete work in progress or embark on a new body of work; undertake research, study or travel; or experiment with new materials or media.
The artists selected for 2008 Fellowships are:
Kate Ali, Dexter, sculpture
Judy Cooke, Portland, painting
Dave Tinman Edgar, Portland, painting
Stewart Harvey, Portland, photography
Deborah Horrell, Portland, glass
Wendy Huhn, Dexter, fiber arts
Linda Hutchins, Portland,drawing/installation
Colin H. Ives, Eugene, media arts
Anya Kivarkis, Eugene, metals
Jeffrey Krolick, Ashland, photography
Paula Rebsom, Portland, interdisciplinary
Lena McGrath Welker (formerly Linda Welker), Portland, sculpture/installation
Amanda Wojick, Eugene, sculpture
Applications from 113 artists were reviewed by panelists who recommended funding based on the quality of the artist's work, a record of sustained professional activity and achievement, and future promise. This year’s panel included painter and Southern Oregon University art faculty member Cody Bustamante (Ashland); Wieden + Kennedy Executive Creative Director Jelly Helm (Portland); Don Hudgins, director, Oregon Alliance for Arts Education (Salem); artist and past fellowship recipient Cynthia Nawalinski (Portland); painter and University of Puget Sound faculty member Elise Richman (Tacoma, WA); art historian and Oregon Arts Commissioner Henry Sayre (Bend); and Namita Wiggers, curator of the Museum of Contemporary Crafts in Portland.
Background on each of the selected artists follows. (Click on each image to view more works by the artist.)
Kate Ali
Kate Ali, raised in Oregon by parents who were craftspeople, says “making sculpture was engrained in me from my earliest experience.” Her work crosses a number of mediums, but often refers to interpersonal space and interaction. Installations, such as Dining Dynamics, require the viewer to take part in the artwork. In that work, a number of diners attempt to eat as each person’s fork is connected by a cable under the table to another diner’s. Says the artist: “Sculpture gives me an opportunity to explore a variety of media based on the context of my idea. I am driven to find that fine line that connects conceptual interest with the well-made object.” A graduate of California College of the Arts, Ali recently returned to rural Lane County where she joined the Integrated Arts Learning program at Lane Community College , connecting teaching artists with public schools.
Judy Cooke
Judy Cooke has an extensive record of achievement, including a 2002 retrospective at The Art Gym at Marylhurst and inclusion in numerous exhibitions throughout the west coast. She is a recipient of awards from the Flintridge Foundation and the Regional Arts & Culture Council, and was recognized with the Bonnie Bronson Fellowship and a 1989 Visual Artist Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. “Reflecting on the difference between sculpture and painting,” says Cooke of her work, “has led me to a territory between the two disciplines.” The review panel was especially excited about the evolution of Cooke’s palette and texture in her recent oil on wood panel works. Cooke is represented by Elizabeth Leach Gallery, Portland .
Dave Tinman Edgar
When Dave Tinman Edgar received a BFA from Cornish College of the Arts in 2004, he had already begun a series of paintings that he continues today, depicting the soldiers, landscape and machinery of a modern-day desert war. The compositions are drawn from Edgar’s experience as an Army Ranger in the 1980’s and his subsequent observations of military training exercises. The review panel was struck by “an amazing materiality of paint” in his work and impressed by his unprejudiced handling of political content. Explains Edgar: “The inspiration for the work is two-fold: my personal military history … and the current war in Iraq and Afghanistan . I paint these images to humanize aspects of the military and to help with my own walk through the two worlds of veteran and civilian.” Edgar’s work has been shown at the New American Art Union in Portland as well as the Glenn and Viola Walters Cultural Art Center in Hillsboro , and is included in the collection of 4Culture, King County ’s public art collection. In addition to his BFA from Cornish, Edgar received a BA summa cum laude from the University of Oregon .
Stewart Harvey
Having begun a series of photographs in New Orleans before Hurricane Katrina devastated the city, Stewart Harvey returned there after the disaster to continue his documentation of the personalities of the city’s residents. He discovered, in the process of his study, “it wasn’t the aftermath of the storm that I found compelling; it was the resilient character of the people who were mired in the process of surviving it.” The work, now partnered with written vignettes, has evolved into a book that he hopes to publish. Harvey is an active member of Portland’s photography community; founder of Portland Photographer’s Forum; and a current member of the Portland Art Museum’s Photography Council. His work has been exhibited widely, including the Tacoma Art Museum, Blue Sky Gallery and the San Francisco Art Institute; and is in the collections of the Portland Art Museum, Visual Chronicle of Portland, and the New Orleans Museum of Art. Harvey received an MA from Portland State University and, when not working on his own projects, operates Lommasson/Harvey commercial studio with fellow photographer Jim Lommasson.
Deborah Horrell
Deborah Horrell is drawn to the metaphors of the vessel forms she creates. Her chosen material, glass, is applied to a mold in a traditional pate de verre process that creates very strong objects of apparent fragility. The panelists found these pieces set themselves apart from other contemporary glasswork in their extraordinary composition of form and color. She has worked in a variety of media – clay, wood, alabaster and now glass – over the course of her career and her objects have been featured in solo shows at The Art Gym at Marylhurst; the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Wisconsin; and the Museum of Northwest Art , La Conner, Washington . Horrell’s work is included in many regional collections, including the Portland Art Museum , Wexner Center for the Arts, the Hallie Ford Museum of Art at Willamette University , Microsoft, and the Seattle Arts Commission. She holds an MFA from the University of Washington and is represented by the Elizabeth Leach Gallery in Portland .
Wendy Huhn
Wendy Huhn works in textiles and mixed media, layering imagery on both large painted an sanded canvases and smaller intimate textile collages with hand embroidery. “The intricacy and boldness of these pieces was striking,” commented one panelist in response to Wendy Huhn’s tactile, graphic, mixed media fabric constructions. Huhn layers imagery from children’s books, other collage material and cultural ephemera onto fabric using multiple transfer and printing processes. Her next body of work will incorporate headstone rubbings from Oregon pioneer cemeteries, transferring the images to cloth. Huhn’s work has been widely shown and published in Quilting Transformed, Fiber Arts and The Best of Contemporary Quilts. It has been included in national exhibitions, including the recent Craft in America, which toured to fine craft museums and was the subject of a major public television series. Wendy Huhn received a BFA in Fibers from the University of Oregon , and is represented by Jane Sauer Gallery, Santa Fe , NM .
Linda Hutchins
“For the past few years I have created work through processes that are not only labor intensive and time consuming, but also highly repetitive,” says Linda Hutchins. “I execute these processes by hand, and at the limits of my capacity for endurance, discipline and perfection.” Panelists describe Hutchins’ pieces, drawn either with ink, or, in the case of the recent installation drawn with her grandmother’s spoon directly onto the wall, as “meditative, sensual algorithms.” Hutchins received a BSE in Computer Engineering from the University of Michigan and a BFA in Drawing from Pacific Northwest College of Art. Her work is included in the collections of 4Culture, King County Public Art Collection, Multnomah County and the Museum of Contemporary Craft . She is represented by Pulliam Deffenbaugh Gallery in Portland .
Colin H. Ives
Colin Ives describes the focus of his creative practice as an overlapping or hybrid of art, technology and ecology. His recent work uses multi-media and digital projection in installations that include moving image and sound, as well as the visible technical apparatus to create the environment. The grant panel was taken with Ives’ ability to create a sensory experience beyond the machine. Colin Ives holds two Masters Degrees in Intermedia and Video Art from the University of Iowa and is currently an Assistant Professor and Director of Digital Arts at the University of Oregon . His work has been included in international exhibitions in South Korea and China and the 13 th International Symposium of Electronic Art, PDX Film Fest, and The Tool as Art, among others, in the United States .
Anya Kivarkis
Anya Kivarkis’ metal work challenges the traditions of jewelry, which she explains as “a signifier of luxury, and excessive embellishment signaling wealth and civility.” Her work often begins with historical designs found in Baroque paintings, historical sketches by jewelry designers, and photographs of Victorian jewelry. As she translates these records into an object, she presents only the information available to her, leaving blanks or shallow squares where the design was not shown or not clear. The panel remarked of these pieces: “seductive…unlike anything else.” Kivarkis, a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Oregon , has an impressive international exhibition history, including inclusion in Schmuck 2007, International Jewelry Exhibition in Munich ; and exhibitions at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, the Tacoma Art Museum and John Michael Kohler Arts Center , Wisconsin . She is represented by Sienna Gallery, Lenox , Massachusetts and Galerie Rob Koudijs, Amsterdam . Kivarkis received a BFA in Jewelry/Metals from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an MFA in Metals from the State University of New York at New Paltz.
Jeffrey Krolick
Photographer Jeffrey Krolick has created an entire body of work around a single location in Southern Oregon . Explains Krolick: “The images are not landscapes in the traditional sense but rather, appropriations of the seasonal textures and shapes from a unique locale – Emigrant Lake , Oregon .” Deemed by the panel “one of the great colorists in Oregon photography,” Krolick creates images more closely related to abstract painting than landscape photography. He completed a State University of New York campus-wide MFA program where his studies focused on fine art jewelry and sculpture. For the past 20 years, however, photography has been his most consistent artistic pursuit. His work has been included in exhibitions nationally, including the American Craft Museum ; the Smithsonian Institution; Jen Bekman Gallery , New York ; and the Center for Photography at Woodstock in New York . He received a fellowship from the SilverEye Center for Photography in Pittsburgh and was selected by the International Photography Awards as fine art photographer of the year. Krolick is represented by Davis and Cline Gallery in Ashland .
Paula Rebsom
Paula Rebsom’s interdisciplinary work, explains the artist, “explores the intersections where human/animal, predator/prey, domestic/wild and man/nature collide… Although my work crosses may boundaries and disciplines, it exists for the viewer in the form of clean, organized, framed photographs. The process of making the images, however, is anything but.” As a girl, Rebsom hunted with her father and won prizes for marksmanship in shooting competitions. Through a variety of tactics she learned from her father, the artist lures wild animals into “sets” of props and costumes, documenting the ensuing interaction through video and photography. Review panelists were charmed by Rebsom’s urbane use of humor and her mythologized west. Her photography and performance has been shown at the Portland International Airport; The Form/Space Atelier, Seattle; and Flamingo Project Space, Eugene. She has two upcoming shows in 2008: Autzen Gallery at Portland State University and Tilt Gallery and Project Space (solo), Portland. Rebsom received an MFA in Sculpture from the University of Oregon and is currently an Advanced Sculpture Studio Instructor at Marylhurst University.
Lena McGrath Welker (formerly Linda Welker)
As an installation artist, Lena McGrath Welker works with a variety of materials and techniques, including sculpture, drawing, bookbinding, printmaking, collage, stitching and weaving. The Navigation cycle, a project incorporating these techniques, is composed of a number of interrelated pieces. Welker has been building it for seven years; in 2010, it will be installed in total, utilizing the entire North Dakota Museum of Art in Grand Forks . Welker’s elegant presentations deal with concepts of grief, repetition and the limitations of language. The panel found the work “rich and humane.” Elements of this project have been exhibited previously at Reed College , the North Dakota Museum of Art, The Art Gym at Marylhurst, and Contemporary Crafts Gallery in Portland . Welker is a graduate of the Museum Art School (now Pacific Northwest College of Art), and the recipient of many grants and awards.
Amanda Wojick
“I locate my creative practice at intersections of abstract sculpture and drawing, the hand and the machine, and material and consumer culture,” says Amanda Wojick of her mixed media sculpture. Wojick’s exhibitions, most recently at Elizabeth Leach Gallery, Portland; Nina Freudenheim Gallery, Buffalo, NY; and Buffalo Studio Art Center, use sculptures and works on paper to create surreal topographic environments that comment on scale and dimension. The panel found that these works, disparate in scale and dimensionality, held a remarkably strong connection to one another. Holding dual MFA’s from Bard College and the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred, Wojick has lectured and exhibited widely, and was included in the 2003 and 2006 Portland Art Museum Oregon Biennials. She is an Associate Professor of Art at the University of Oregon and represented by Elizabeth Leach Gallery, Portland.
The Oregon Arts Commission believes that the arts and culture are touchstones of community and civic life and that it is essential to preserve, stabilize and develop their central role in Oregon . The Commission provides leadership, funding and arts programs through its grants, special initiatives and services. Nine commissioners, appointed by the Governor, determine arts needs and establish policies for public support of the arts. The Arts Commission became part of the Economic and Community Development Department in 1993 in recognition of the expanding role the arts play in the broader social, economic and educational arenas of Oregon communities. In 2003, the Oregon legislature moved the operations of the Oregon Cultural Trust to the Arts Commission, streamlining operations and making use of the Commission’s expertise in grantmaking, arts and cultural information and community cultural development. More information about the Oregon Arts Commission is available at www.oregonartscommission.org
The Arts Commission is supported with general funds appropriated by the Oregon legislature, federal funds from the National Endowment for the Arts and funds from the Oregon Cultural Trust.
