Artist Trust supported 21 artists with the 2006 Artist Trust/Washington State Arts Commission Fellowships. Each recipient will receive an unrestricted cash award of $6,000. The award recognizes an artist’s creative excellence and accomplishment, professional achievement and continuing dedication to their artistic discipline. In 2006, the Fellowship Program received a total of 363 applications from artists working in Visual Arts, Traditional & Folk Arts, Performing Arts, and Emerging & Cross-Disciplinary Arts.

The information included in each grant recipient profile below is based on each recipient’s application materials submitted at the time of application.

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TRADITIONAL & FOLK ARTS

Mary Sherhart* is a singer, performer and teacher, recently honored and accepted as a gifted singer in the traditional urban genre of Bosnia and Hercegovina, sevdah. In June 2006, she toured for three weeks nationally with legendary artist Omer Pobric, from Bosnia and Hercegovina, to major diaspora communities throughout the US. This was a continuation of a collaboration started during her July 2005 residency with Pobric at the Sevdah Institute, located outside of Sarajevo. Sherhart’s recordings, “Nostalgic Songs from a Balkan Café” and “Somewhere Far Away” with her group Balkan Cabaret are broadcast in Bulgaria and throughout former Yugoslavia. Balkan Cabaret was nominated as a Best Band, world music category, in Seattle Weekly's 2003 and 2004 Music Showcases. Sherhart has collaborated with many musicians over the years including: world renowned guitarist Miroslav Tadic, Amy Denio, pianist Milen Kirov and Croatian composer Tomislav Uhlik. She also has worked with many Northwest groups, including: Kultur Shock; Ruze Dalmatinke; Radost; Vela Luka Croatian Ensemble; Balkanarama; Nisava; Bonboni; and a number of community choirs which include: Seattle Pro Musica, Pacifica Children's Choir and the City Cantabile Choir. Sherhart has created numerous musical projects which engage the ethnic communities and build bridges between them and the general public. Sherhart is a member of the Advisory Board of the University of Washington Department of Slavic Languages and Literature, as well as president of their alumni and friends board. She holds a degree in liberal studies from Antioch University with concentrations in both ethnomusicology and arts management.

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Lori Talcott is a Seattle metalsmith making both contemporary work and Norwegian folk jewelry. Her studies began at Washington State University and Lund University in Sweden where she earned a BA in Art History and Scandinavian Studies. After finishing a BFA in Metal Design from the University of Washington, she pursued her interest in European folk jewelry to Norway where she worked as an apprentice to a master silversmith. Her work is in numerous private and public collections, including the Renwick Gallery of the National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution and the Tacoma Art Museum, and has been featured in Metalsmith, Ornament, Korean Craft, and various other European publications. She exhibits, lectures and teaches nationally and in Europe, most recently presenting research at a conference in Reykjavik, Iceland. In 1997, Talcott was awarded an Artist Trust Fellowship in Craft, and in 2004 an Arts Fellowship from the American-Scandinavian Foundation to spend a year on sabbatical in Norway.

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VISUAL

Julie Alexander paints organic grids that are about relationship. She amasses horizontal and vertical lines into a landscape that contains layered color, surface tension, undercurrents of dispersal, and social bundling. “Currently each of my paintings is an open-ended contemplation of a nearly single color. I am drawn to the cool end of blue as water with its fluidity, its uncertain, layered depths, and its surface as it interacts with air; blue as a healing color associated with the fifth chakra; and, blue edging more to green, as the ground in Cy Twombly’s 2003 paintings ‘A gathering of time’,” says the artist. Alexander has recently exhibited her work at the Alchemy Gallery (Seattle), the gallery at Eastern Washington University (Cheney, WA) and at the Chase Gallery (Spokane, WA). Her work was also recently added to the King County Portable Works collection. Julie received her BFA from the University of Washington in 1981 and she lives in Seattle.

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Cris Bruch uses a variety of materials to create mostly large scale sculptures. He has recently exhibited his work and is represented by the Elizabeth Leach Gallery in Portland, OR and the Lawrimore Project in Seattle. He has also recently had a solo exhibition at the Kittredge Gallery at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma; recent public art commissions have included a monumental outdoor sculpture for the Federal Courthouse in Eugene, OR and at Vulcan, Inc. in Seattle. He has been awarded the Betty Bowen Memorial Award, an Artist Trust GAP grant, the Neddy Artist Fellowship and a residency at the Djerassi Foundation, among others. In 2007, Chris will be included in the 8th Northwest Biennial exhibition curated and organized by the Tacoma Art Musuem. Bruch received a BFA in Ceramics/Sculpture from the University of Kansas, Lawrence, a MA in Video and an MFA in Sculpture from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Bruch lives in Seattle.

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Buddy Bunting works primarily in ink and watercolor on paper; his most recent work is based on the California prison system. He recently exhibited at SOIL Art Gallery (Seattle), PS122 Gallery (NYC), Kirkland Arts Center and 4Culture Gallery (Seattle). He was recently awarded the 4Culture Special Project Grant and the Artist Trust GAP grant. Bunting attended the Maryland Institute College of Art, the San Francisco Art Institute, and received his MFA from Boston University College of Fine Arts. He currently lives in Seattle and is a member of the Seattle-based artists’ collective SOIL.

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Cat Clifford uses drawing, animation and video to explore place, time and observation. She is concerned with showing the viewer the subtle daily and seasonal changes to landscape and the related patterns, thoughts and actions that inhabit landscape. She has recently exhibited her work in Seattle at the Henry Art Gallery, Crawl Space, Howard House, 4Culture Gallery and SOIL Art Gallery. She was recently awarded the Betty Bowen Award Finalist Prize and a Jentel Artist Fellowship. She received her MFA from the Meadows School of the Arts at Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX and currently lives and works on Vashon Island.

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Drew Daly uses everyday objects (chairs, tables, etc.) in his work, altering them into fascinating sculptural pieces in an “attempt to create a sense of wonder and provoke a moment of recognition of the everyday environment which is often more assumed then experienced.” Drew received his MFA from the University of Washington in 2004, was an Artist in Residence at the Archie Bray Foundation, and has recently exhibited his work at the Texas State University, Austin, TX and Greg Kucera Gallery, Seattle.

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Steve Davis* received his MFA from the University of Idaho in 1983 and has been professionally engaged in photography for over 20 years. Steve’s current work is large scale photographs of teenagers in various juvenile detention facilities and halfway houses around the state. Steve is the Coordinator of Photography and faculty member at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA. He received the Santa Fe Center for Photography’s Project Competition in 2002. His work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, and is in the collections of the George Eastman House, the Tacoma Art Museum and the Musee de la Photographie in Belgium. He is represented by the James Harris Gallery and lives in Olympia.

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Ann Gale* is a figure painter who creates portraiture that explores the psychology and sexuality of both artist and subject. She uses short, fragmented brushstrokes that merge the figure with the ground, working slowly, drawing and painting directly from the model for many weeks or months. The artist’s influences include Antonio López Garcia and Lucian Freud, and particularly, the sculptor Alberto Giacommeti. Gale received her MFA in painting and printmaking from Yale University School of Art in 1991. Her work has recently been exhibited in group shows at the SoFA Gallery (Indiana), the Staten Island Museum (NY), the Gallerie De Bellefeuille (Montreal), and the San Francisco International Art Fair. Gale as been awarded the Elizabeth Greensheilds Grant, the Artist Trust GAP grant (twice), a NEW/WESTAF Individual Artist Fellowship, and an Artist Trust Fellowship (1996), among others. Ann is represented by the Hackett-Freedman Gallery in San Francisco and resides in Seattle.

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Blake Haygood is an artist, curator and co-director of Platform Gallery and has lived in Seattle since 1992. His current paintings involve machinery parts of undeterminable scale floating in space without a horizon and in constant states of decomposition and regeneration. “I think of my art as a way of telling stories. Referencing a combination of organic and mechanical imagery filtered through my imperfect memory, I've imagined a vocabulary of forms to populate a fictional world and to build a kind of contemporary mythology,” says the artist. Haygood has recently exhibited at the Platform Gallery (Seattle), Gallery One (Ellensburg), the Tacoma Art Museum, and the Center on Contemporary Art (Seattle). Blake was recently nominated for the Neddy Artist Fellowship for Printmaking. He has also received a Seattle Arts Commission Sustaining Award and he was a finalist for the Betty Bowen Award (1996). Blake has a show in 2007 at the Missoula Art Museum.

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Jenny Heishman has been living and working as a sculptor in Seattle since completing her MFA at Ohio University in 1999. She was a member of Soil Artist Cooperative from 2000 until 2002. In 2000, she was an emerging artist resident at Atlantic Center for the Arts with Charles Ray and Jennifer Pastor, in Fall 2005 was in residence at Pilchuck School of Glass, and most recently completed a residency at the Vermont Studio Center. Jenny is the recipient of both an Artist Trust GAP grant and a 4Culture Artist Special Projects Grant. She was a finalist for both a Creative Capital Grant in 2004 and the Betty Bowen Award in 2006. She is currently working on a commission for an outdoor permanent work for Ernst Park in the Fremont neighborhood of Seattle through Seattle Parks. Her work is represented by Howard House Contemporary (Seattle).

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Ryan Horvath creates long panoramic assembled photographs. He received his BFA in glass and ceramics from Bowling Green State University in 1998. Shortly after his undergraduate studies, he spent two years as a studio assistant for international ceramic artist Jun Kaneko. In 2003, he was invited to the Roja International Art Symposium in Roja, Latvia. Horvath was a recipient of the Nordstrom Recognition Award and the University of Washington’s Graduate School Funding for Excellence and Innovation, while he worked on his MFA in Ceramics at the University of Washington, which he completed in 2004. His work has recently been exhibited in the Larson Gallery (Yakima), the Henry Art Gallery (Seattle), the Crawl Space Gallery (Seattle), and the Chautauqua Center for Visuals Arts (NY). In 2005, he had his third solo exhibition at the University of Montana. Horvath is currently working in Seattle.

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Tivon Rice’s work often combines computer equipment, steel, and audio/video components to create unique three-dimensional installations. By pairing video with objects and forms that have strong cultural value, he hopes to “confront the increasingly objective nature of television, and embrace the viewer’s abilities of visual perception, temporal awareness, and critical analysis.” Rice received a BFA in 2000 from the University of Colorado in Sculpture & Electric Media and an MFA in 2006 from the University of Washington in Sculpture. His recent solo exhibitions include Delphi at the UW Ceramics & Metal Arts Gallery, Philo’s Cave at the Center on Contemporary Art in Seattle, and 2.0 at the UW Sand Point Gallery. Rice has recently shown his work in a group exhibition, This is Gallery, at the Lawrimore Project, and several group exhibits at the Jacob Lawrence Gallery, among others. He has a solo exhibition at 4Culture (Seattle) in December 2006.

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Alex Schweder** received a Bachelor of Architecture from Pratt Institute in 1993 and a Master of Architecture from Princeton University in 1998. He has recently exhibited at Howard House (Seattle), the American Academy (Rome, Italy), Parsons School of Design (NYC), and the Tollbooth Gallery (Tacoma). Schweder has received the Rome Prize, a 4Culture Special Projects Award, an Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs City Artists Grant, an Artist Trust GAP grant, and was an artist in residence at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, among others. In 2007, Alex will be included in the 8th Northwest Biennial exhibition curated and organized by the Tacoma Art Musuem and will exhibit at Suyama Space (Seattle). Alex is currently represented by Howard House and resides in Seattle.

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EMERGING & CROSS-DISCIPLINARY ARTS

Perri Lynch combines audio recordings with multi-media to investigate the relationship between human perception and sense of place. Issues of navigation, intuition, and physical proximity are key components of these investigations. Through combined techniques in sound, light, sculpture, and 2-D renderings, Lynch explores many attributes of a place simultaneously. Her latest series focuses on cognitive mapping and the human need to explore, inspired by recent travels in India, Ireland, and Sri Lanka. Her work has been exhibited in Seattle at the Jack Straw New Media Gallery, Consolidated Works, and Northwest Film Forum, and at the Kirkland Arts Center. In 2005, Lynch completed her first permanent public work, Imbrication, located at the Lake City Library (Seattle). Her second commission, Sightline: Standing Stones, is due to be installed in Seattle’s Magnuson Park in late 2006. Lynch received her MFA in printmaking in 2001 from Cranbrook Academy of Art and currently lives in Seattle.

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Dan Mihalyo & Annie Han collaborate on projects in architecture, site-specific large-scale installations and typological research. Trained equally in architecture and the studio arts, their work is an exploration of the history and memory of previously occupied sites with spatial gestures at the architectural scale. Both Mihalyo and Han received Bachelor of Architecture degrees from the University of Oregon with training in drawing, metals, sculpture, ceramics and photography. Their work has been exhibited in Seattle at the Center on Contemporary Art, the Henry Art Gallery, Suyama Space, and the Lawrimore Project. They were selected by the Architecture League of New York as a 2006 Emerging Voice, and their work has been reviewed in Art in America, Architectural Record and Dwell, among others. The artist team has received a Creative Capital Visual Arts Grant, a 2006 Stranger Genius Award and a project grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts. Mihalyo and Han reside in Seattle.

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Jesse Paul Miller* is a multimedia artist and received a BFA from Colorado State University in 1991. His sculptural and installation pieces utilize sound as a material often in concordance with the mass-produced cast-off object, drawing, sculpture and video. He has had numerous exhibitions regionally and internationally including the Seattle Art Museum, the Henry Art Gallery (Seattle), Deadtech (Chicago), the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria (British Columbia), Omega Point (Tokyo) and mostly recently at SOIL Art Gallery (Seattle), which was a collaborative installation with Brent Watanabe. His visual and sound work has appeared in catalogs, magazines and newspaper reviews internationally, including such periodicals as Sculpture, Art US, the Sound Projector (UK), Bad Alchemy (Germany), and others. His work can be found in the permanent collection of the Seattle Art Museum and Western Bridge (Seattle). Miller received an Artist Trust GAP grant in 2005 and was selected for the Jack Straw New Media Gallery in 2003. Miller has resided in Seattle since 1992.

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PERFORMING ARTS

Etienne Cakpo* is a professional dancer and choreographer from Benin, who specializes in performance and instruction of contemporary West African dance and traditional dance from Benin. He is a self-taught dancer who has been strongly influenced by modern dance legends, as well as various directors, choreographers, and dancers that he has worked with over the last 20 years. Etienne was selected to participate in the 2006 Dance Omi International Dance Collective, as well as the 2005 UNESCO-Aschberg Bursury for Artists award, where he lead a three-month choreography and dance residency at Espace Sodo Bade in Senegal. Etienne has performed regionally and internationally, and currently resides in Seattle.

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Amelia Reeber is a Seattle-based choreographer and performer, and received a BA in Dance from the University of Washington in 2000. Her solo work has been presented in Seattle at On the Boards, Velocity’s MainSpace Theatre, Freehold Theater, and Chamber Theater, and in Portland, OR at PICA’s TBA Festival. She has danced for and/or collaborated with Corrie Befort, Sheri Cohen, KT Niehoff, Katie Duck, and Deborah Hay, among others. Reeber has received an Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs City Artist Grant, a 4Culture grant, an Artist Trust GAP grant, among others. Currently Amelia is working on a film version of Frank Hayes with Cascadia Film Collective (Seattle), as well as a collaborative project, Mountain, directed by Deborah Hay (TX), that will be presented a various venues in Western Washington including On the Boards in Spring 2007.

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Tikka Sears is an actor, director, multimedia performance artist and educator. Her new multimedia theater piece, Work created under compulsion/Memory war, explores the intersections of physical theater, myth, oral history, and non-realist documentary. She creates, performs, and directs solo performance pieces and frequently collaborates with video and glass artist Manuel Castro. Sears has been studying and performing Indonesian arts for 15 years and weaves mask, dance and puppetry traditions into her current work. In 2004 she returned from two years in Indonesia where she was a Fulbright Artist-in-Residence. She co-created and directed Choice and the Hunter's Machine, a multimedia theater piece with the Black Umbrella Theater which performed at the JakArt International festival in Jakarta. Her one-woman show, Marsinah Accuses, written by Ratna Sarumpaet, toured in six cities across the US. Tikka has a BA in Theater and a Certificate in Documentary Video Production from the University of Washington and has worked on numerous films and multimedia projects as a videographer, director, and actor. In addition to two years of Fulbright funding, Sears has received grants from the US Embassy, the American-Indonesian Exchange Foundation, and a 2006 Artist Trust GAP grant.

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Carey Wong* is a scenic and costume designer who has worked on over 200 productions in the US, Canada, China and Spain. Wong’s theatre credits include the Seattle Repertory Theatre, ACT Theatre (Seattle), Intiman (Seattle), Seattle Children’s Theatre, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Portland Center Stage, Tacoma Actors Guild, Childsplay, and Prince Music Theater (PA). He has been Resident Designer for Portland Opera, Opera Memphis and Wildwood Park for the Performing Arts (AK). Recent and current projects include The Chosen at the Seattle Repertory Theatre, The Underpants at the ACT Theatre, and The Grapes of Wrath at the Intiman, among others. Wong is currently a freelance designer and theatre consultant based in Gig Harbor, WA.

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*These awards are provided through generous funding from the Washington State Arts Commission.

**This award is provided through generous funding from Cathy and Michael Casteel.

This year’s Fellowship awards are made possible, in part, through generous gifts from: Eve & Chap Alvord, Shari & John Behnke, Cathy & Michael Casteel, Paul Goode (Ireland Residency), Catherine Eaton Skinner & David Skinner, Nancy & Buster Alvord, Katharyn Alvord Gerlich, Mia McEldowney & Bill Mitchell, Nancy Skinner Nordhoff & Lynn Hayes, Linda & Jerry Paros.

Statistics for the 2006 Artist Trust/Washington State Arts Commission Fellowship

Applicants and Recipients from Each Discipline
Traditional & Folk Arts: 15 applicants; 2 recipients
Emerging & Cross-Disciplinary Arts: 28 applicants; 3 recipients
Performing Arts: 47 applicants; 4 recipients
Visual Arts: 273 applicants; 12 recipients

Locations of Applicants
King County: 244
Western Washington (excluding King County): 90
Eastern Washington: 17
Central Washington: 12

A total of 363 artists in Washington State applied this year.
21 artists were awarded Fellowships.