Artist Trust supported 21 artists with the 2008 Artist Trust/Washington State Arts Commission Fellowships. Each recipient will receive an unrestricted cash award of $7,500. The award recognizes an artist’s creative excellence and accomplishment, professional achievement and continuing dedication to their artistic discipline. In 2008, the Fellowship Program received a total of 450 applications from artists working in Emerging & Cross Disciplinary, Traditional & Folk, Performing and Visual Arts.

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

Read about the 2008 Fellowship Recipients Meet the Artist Events here.

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Emerging & Cross Disciplinary Arts

*James Coupe (Seattle) utilizes his background in sculpture and new media to construct art installations that explore systems, agency and control: works he terms "self-organizing discovery systems". In his latest project, (re)collector, a network of intelligent surveillance cameras were positioned throughout Cambridge, England and programmed to recognize and capture "cinematic moments". Each day, the footage was autonomously synthesized into complete film narratives and projected back into the city center, algorithmically re-staging the fragmented experience of urban life. James is a Professor of Digital Art and Experimental Media at the University of Washington.

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Wynne Greenwood (Seattle) is an interdisciplinary artist working with video, new media, performance, sculpture, and sound to consider how to connect our time, space, bodies, cultures, and communities. After years of working with video, Wynne began to experiment with methods to make her work physical; extending two-dimensional videos into three-dimensional space and vice versa. Wynne has traversed the oftentimes indefinable territory of interdisciplinary artist, performing as Tracy + the Plastics in galleries such as The Frye Art Museum in Seattle, but also with the likes of Le Tigre and King Cobra across the United States. Her work has evolved past the individual contributions of each media and, her latest work, Sister Taking Nap, is scheduled to appear at On The Boards in Seattle in 2009.

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Michael Simi (Seattle) merges digital technology with everyday objects to create art systems and installations that question the poetics of interaction. His goal: “to create a diffusion layer between personal experience and the obfuscating nature of language.” Michael has been shown across Washington in addition to many shows in Marquette, MI where he completed his Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2004. He completed his education in 2007 with a Master in Fine Arts from the University of Washington. His work is scheduled to be shown at Seattle's Gallery 4Culture in 2009.

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Performing Arts

Chad Goller-Sojourner (Seattle) is a poet and spoken word artist. His latest work, Sitting in Circles With Rich White Girls: Memoirs of a Bulimic Black Boy, is a collection of autobiographical poems and monologues which explore the process and pattern of identity construction, specifically how growing up fat, dark-skinned, gay and adopted by white folks affected and shaped his maturation. Circles began as a five-minute performance piece, which was performed in venues such as the Seattle Poetry Festival, Seattle Poetry Slam, and Voices Rising. Over the past two years, Sitting in Circles has transformed into an 80-minute solo show. Chad graduated from Western Washington University in 1993 with a double major in African American studies and Public Policy. He completed his graduate studies at Columbia University in Higher Education/Urban Education, but has since taken writing/spoken word workshops from the Bent Writing Institute, Pat Graney Company, and others.

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Lucia Neare (Seattle) is the mind behind Ooo La La! A May Day Spectacular. On May 1st, 2008, Downtown Seattle was transformed into a grand corridor of whimsy, included more than 200 performers and featured a large number of traveling ensembles. In Ooo La La as well as her other endeavors, Lucia hopes to create “free, living, joyful experiences for public audiences that offer vivid infusions of whimsy and inspire hope and expansive thinking,” in order to feed the creative life of the community and bring forth a new renaissance.  Lucia received her undergraduate education from Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts and did graduate work in Theatre/Contemporary Performance at Naropa University in Colorado.

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Zoe Scofield (Seattle) creates performances that are not just experienced through a time-based perception, but further explored through photography and video installation. Instead of separate works, these variations on a performance are continued distillations of specific aspects of the original performance that may reach a broader audience than performance alone. Zoe has choreographed for the Northwest New Works Festival, has received funding from the National Dance Project, received residencies from The Body Festival and Bates Dance Festival, and is currently the Co-Artistic Director of the Zoe / Juniper dance company. She has attended the Boston Conservatory, Prometheus, Samarya Center for Integrated Movement, and Seattle Central Community College.
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*Olivier Wevers (Seattle) spent the past 17 years of his life as a classical ballet dancer, performing in Columbia City Ballet, Royal Winnipeg Ballet, and Pacific Northwest Ballet. As a choreographer, he seeks to transform established traditional vocabulary and present ballet in a new perspective. Olivier’s latest work, Shindig, expands the manipulation of classic choreography to other elements of the performance including interpretations of the tutu and eliminating performance structure in favor of series vignettes that played out in front of an audience like flipping through a photo album.

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Traditional & Folk Arts

Kazuko Yamazaki (Bremerton) graduated from Indiana University with a Ph.D in Anthropology specializing in the Anthropology of Dance in 2001. She also studied in the Hanayagi and Fujima schools of Traditional Japanese Dance in Tokyo and uses her unique perspective as a native performer with an embodied intercultural perspective. By discerning what is most essential in the tradition and distinguish it from features that are incidental, styles that are particular to certain performers, and cultural stereotypes, Kazuko hopes to preserve Traditional Japanese Dance in its elements.

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Lisa Telford (Everett) was born in Ketchikan, Alaska in 1957. As a Gawa Git’ans Git’anee Haida weaver she comes from a long line of weavers including her grandmother, mother, aunt, cousins and daughter. Lisa harvests and prepares her own material, using red and yellow cedar bark and spruce root. The gathering of materials takes her hundreds of miles from home and hours of preparation that vary depending on the final product. Bark is traditionally stored for one year and then must be processed further. Her baskets may be seen in the collections of The Oregon Historical Society, Hallie Ford Museum of Art, The Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, The Heard Museum, The Portland Art Museum, and The Burke Museum.

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VISUAL ARTS

Grant Barnhart (Shoreline) uses his current work to assert the belief that America’s legendary status as liberator and military superpower are in the midst of a precipitous decline and harrowing collapse. His paintings depict American archetypes of masculinity, specifically Midwest cultural icons, and their female counterparts. These symbols of American glory have been removed from their natural habitats and placed in awkward, often comical juxtapositions, which are saturated with our national colors. Grant’s work has been exhibited at the OKOK Gallery in Seattle in addition to numerous group shows across the United States. Grant was educated at the Columbus College of Art and Design in Columbus, OH and graduated in 2000.

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Debra Baxter (Seattle) began working in alabaster as a way to convey flesh. She feels the laborious process of rock carving provides a process during which she may infuse the work with love and longing, and physically. Her most recent work addresses the willful actualized self: skin, voice and body present the only barriers between the world and herself. Debra’s work has been exhibited at the Soil Art Gallery, Gallery 4Culture, Zeitgeist Gallery, and in New York and Minneapolis. She earned her BFA in 1996 from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 1996 and her MFA from Bard College in 2007.

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Diem Chau (Seattle) was born in Saigon, Vietnam. She describes her medium as stories. Diem came from a nomadic childhood, possessing only necessities, so the items of greatest value were the stories told by her grandmother. She has spent countless hours collecting memories and pieces of different cultures by listening to their stories and believes it is her turn to be the storyteller and weave the thread that connects us to each other; the storyteller holding one end and the audience the other. Her work has been shown at OKOK Gallery, Gallery 4Culture, and the Cornish Alumni Gallery. Diem graduated with a BFA from Cornish College of the Arts in 2002.

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Jack Daws (Seattle) addresses a range of socio-political issues in overt ways. However, he does not create in order to get a reaction. Jack’s work is intended to be a meditation: an invitation to a line of questioning and not a conclusion. His work has been exhibited at the Greg Kucera Gallery, King County Art Gallery, and Commencement Art Gallery. Also, Jack’s work may be found in the collections of the Henry Art Gallery, Tacoma Art Museum, and Western Bridge.

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Scott Foldesi (Seattle) works from photographs culled form various media sources or shot him. His paintings focus on familiar elements of the American landscape such as strip malls and abandoned parking lots. Scott’s work has been exhibited at New Works, JHG Project Space, and James Harris Gallery in Seattle. He received his MFA in painting and drawing from the University of Oregon in 1997.

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*Justin Gibbens (Thorp) imitates the conventions of 18th and 19th century zoological illustration and traditional Chinese fine-line painting. In his latest series, Birds of Paradise, Justin has transformed John James Audubon-like illustrations into monstrous hybrids, reptilian dragons, and other forms of daemonic life. Justin has recently been exhibited at the G. Gibson Gallery and PUNCH Gallery in Seattle, and Elizabeth Leach Gallery in Portland, OR. He received his Bachelor of Arts from Central Washington University in 1998 and participated in a Traditional Chinese Painting Exchange Program at Anhui University in Hefei, China in 2002. Justin Also completed the University of Washington Scientific Illustration certificate program in 2003.

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Philippe Mazaud (Tacoma) finds it useful to articulate ideas about his work in terms of a number of dualities. At once his photographs are pieces of fiction as addition to documentation of reality. The process of shooting in 8"x10" format is meticulously executed, yet he does not see much in the black of night, so his work maintains a sense of improvisation in the face of 30-45 minute exposures. Philippe’s work has been shown in galleries from New York to Carson City, Paris to Idaho. He was born in New York City and educated in both New York and Paris, France including the New York Studio School and the École des Beaux Arts.

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*Nicholas Nyland (Lakewood) is drawn to abstraction’s “dumbness.” He believes it is generous and capacious: able to absorb and then release a multitude of references including, in his case, Chinese scholar’s stones, Japanese gardens, early American decorative traditions, and 1970’s design. Nicholas has been exhibited at the Contemporary Art Center in Peoria, Illinois; Soil Gallery, Seattle; and at the Seattle Art Museum 35th anniversary exhibition. He received his education at the University of Washington and University of Pennsylvania.

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Ariana Page Russell (Seattle) has sensitive skin that easily flushes.  She also has dermatographia, a condition that allows her to draw temporary welts on her skin.  Ariana is exploring this and other fleeting adornment as a fashion of skin, including the power of a blush--an uncontrollable response revealing internal sentiment.  She has been exhibited at Magnan Projects, New York, NY; Gallery 4Culture, Platform, SOIL; and The Tahoe Gallery, Incline Village, NV. She received her BFA at the University of Nevada, Reno and her MFA at the University of Washington.
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Jim Woodring (Seattle) has made great sacrifices in order to keep a clear view down the corridor of his years so he may not forget the glorious confusion of his early youth. He heard voices, saw apparitions, and experienced awful paranoia, which have all become basis for his artwork. Jim has been exhibited in Australia, France, Japan, The Netherlands, Germany, and Seattle.

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Robert Yoder (Seattle) combines common art materials such as paper, graphite, and ink with industrial materials such as vinyl adhesive films and reflective tapes to create collages that are minimal and graphic. Many reference architecture and landscape. His work is an ongoing investigation of conflicting views and ambiguous space as it relates to two-dimensional depictions of three-dimensional space.

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Jennifer Zwick (Seattle) constructs narrative photographs that tell stories exploring fantastical childhood moments, focusing on bizarrely adventurous young girls, drawing from childhood desires, memories, and emotions. In her first solo show, I’m So Scared/It’s All So Hard, Jennifer aimed to convey and channel her anxiety/awkwardness through multimedia works. She has been exhibited at the SAM Gallery, Port Angeles Fine Art Center, and SOIL Art Gallery. Jennifer received her BFA in Photography from the University of Washington.

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

This year’s Fellowships are made possible, in part, through generous gifts from Nancy and Buster Alvord,  Michael and Cathy Casteel, Katharyn A. Gerlich, Helen Jewett, Mia McEldowney and Bill Mitchell, Linda and Jerry Paros, Catherine Eaton Skinner and David Skinner, Nancy Skinner Nordhoff and Lynn Hays, Jon & Mary Shirley and Merrill Wagner and Bob Ryman.

Institutional support of Artist Trust’s core programs, including Fellowships, comes from Culture, ArtsFund, Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, PONCHO, Seattle Mayor’s Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs, Target, Washington State Arts Commission, and Washington Women’s Foundation.

Statistics for the 2008 Artist Trust/Washington State Arts Commission Fellowship

Applicants and Recipients from Each Discipline
Visual: 330 applicants; 12 recipients
Emerging & Cross Disciplinary: 45 applicants; 3 recipients
Performing: 58 applicants; 4 recipients
Traditional & Folk Arts: 20 applicants; 2 recipients

Locations of Applicants
King County: 287
Western Washington (excluding King County): 121
Eastern Washington: 24
Central Washington: 14

A total of 450 artists in Washington State applied this year.
21 artists were awarded Fellowships.