Artist Trust supported 16 artists with the 2009 Artist Trust Fellowships. Artists were selected by a panel of three per discipline. Each recipient will receive an unrestricted cash award of $7,000, plus $500 upon completion of their Meet the Artist event, for a total of $7,500. The award recognizes an artist’s creative excellence and accomplishment, professional achievement and continuing dedication to their artistic discipline. In 2009, the Fellowship Program received a total of 382 applications from artists working in Craft, Literature, Media and Music Arts.

The information included in each grant recipient profile below is based on each recipient’s submitted materials at the time of application. All images open and include image credits when available. Artist websites have also been posted when available.

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CRAFT ARTS
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*Janice Arnold (Olympia) focuses on feltmaking as functional fabric and an art form. Profoundly influenced by Kyrgyz and Mongolian feltmakers and their ancient traditions, she has designed intricately executed small-scale pieces and large elaborate, site-specific art installations, most recently Palace Yurt at the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. Arnold’s passionate pursuit to invent new textiles brings this ancient art form fully into the present. Through wool and the inclusion of other natural fibers, she creates an incredible range of textiles from supple, light and luminous to dense and resilient. Her virtuosity as a textile artist is evident in the multifaceted character of her work. www.jafelt.com

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~Rachel Brumer (Seattle) has had three nonverbal careers. After receiving an interdisciplinary degree from Mills College, (with a short break to dance with Ringling Brothers Circus) her creative life began as a professional modern dancer. After an additional degree from Seattle Central Community College she became an interpreter of American Sign Language, and has been working as a visual artist for the past 19 years. Her work is in the collections of the Seattle Art Museum, the Tacoma Art Museum, the University of Washington Special Collections, the Seattle Arts Commission, Washington State Arts Commission, Harborview Hospital, the Museum of Arts and Design, as well as numerous private collections. www.rachelbrumer.com

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Beth Cavener Stichter (Garfield) received her MFA from Ohio State University in 2002. She has shown in numerous galleries and museums nationally, and is represented by the Claire Oliver Gallery in New York. The sculptures she creates focus on human psychology, stripped of context and rationalization, and articulated through animal forms. On the surface, these figures are simply feral and domestic individuals suspended in a moment of tension. Beneath the surface they embody the impacts of aggression, territorial desires, isolation, and pack mentality. Her work focuses on human psychology, stripped of context and rationalization, and articulated through animal forms. www.followtheblackrabbit.com

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LITERARY ARTS
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*Rick Barot (Tacoma) has published two books with Sarabande Books: The Darker Fall (2002) and Want (2008). Want was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award and won the 2009 Grub Street Book Prize. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and from Stanford University, where he was a Wallace Stegner Fellow and a Jones Lecturer in Poetry. His poems have appeared in many publications including Poetry, The New Republic, The Paris Review, Ploughshares and American Poetry Review. He teaches at Pacific Lutheran University and in the low-residency MFA Program at Warren Wilson College.
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Andrew Feld (Seattle) is the author of Citizen (HarporCollins 2004), a 2003 National Poetry Series selection, chosen by Ellen Bryant Voigt. He holds an MFA from the University of Houston and has received a Wallace Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University. His other honors include a James Michener Foundation grant, the “Discovery”/The Nation Award, two Pushcart Prizes and work included in the Best American Poetry series. His poetry has appeared in The Canary, Poetry, Tikkun, Triquarterly and many other journals. He is an Assistant Professor at the University of Washington, the Editor-in-Chief of The Seattle Review. He lives in Seattle with his wife, Pimone Triplett, and their son Lukas.
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+Angela Jane Fountas (Seattle) writes and teaches in Seattle, WA. She was a 2008-2009 writer-in-residence at Richard Hugo House and a 2006 Jack Straw Writer. Her work has appeared in Fairy Tale Review, Quick Fiction, Diagram, Sentence, Redivider, Syntax, and elsewhere. She has a collection of short stories making the rounds and is currently working on a collection of linked stories. Angela’s work has been supported by grants from the Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs and 4Culture. She earned her MFA in creative writing from the University of Alabama, and she runs two websites in support of writers, WriteHabit.org and Quoterly.net. www.writehabit.org
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Mike O’Connor (Port Townsend) is a poet, writer, and translator of Chinese literature. Through the 1970’s he farmed and worked in the woods on the Olympic Peninsula: through the 1980s and into the mid-nineties he lived in Asia where he studied Chinese culture and worked as a journalist. He has published eight volumes of poetry and translation, most recently When the Tiger Weeps and Unnecessary Talking: The Montesano Stories, a memoir of childhood days. He is a recipient of an NEA literature fellowship and is an honorary fellow of Hong Kong Baptist University.
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Midge Raymond (Seattle) received the Spokane Prize for Short Fiction for her short-story collection, Forgetting English (Eastern Washington University Press, 2009). Her work has appeared in American Literary Review, Ontario Review, North American Review, the Los Angeles Times, and other publications. She is on the editorial board of the literary journal Green Hills Literary Lantern. Midge taught communication writing at Boston University, as well as creative writing at Boston’s Grub Street Writers and San Diego Writers, Ink, where she served as vice president of the board of directors. She currently teaches at the Richard Hugo House.
www.midgeraymond.com
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Molly Tenenbaum (Seattle) Poet Molly Tenenbaum is the author of Now (Bear Star Press, 2007) and By a Thread (Van West & Co, 2000). Her chapbooks are Blue Willow, Old Voile, and Story. She was a 2007 resident at Hedgebrook, as well as a 2007 Jack Straw Writer. She is also a musician and plays with the old-time string band The Queen City Bulldogs. Her CD is Instead of a Pony. She teaches English at North Seattle Community College, and gives music lessons at home.
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*Shawn Vestal (Spokane) Shawn Vestal’s short stories have appeared in Tin House, McSweeney’s, The Southern Review, Ecotone, Quarterly West, CutBank, Sou’Wester, The Florida Review and Web Conjunctions. A graduate of Eastern Washington University’s MFA program in fiction, he is currently completing his first novel. He has worked as a reporter and editor at newspapers around the Northwest for more than 20 years, most recently at The Spokesman-Review in Spokane, where he lives with his wife and son.
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Corrina Wycoff (Seattle) is the author of O Street, a novel-in-stories published by OV Books, which was a 2007 Lambda Literary Award finalist. Her fiction and essays have also appeared in the anthologies Best Essays Northwest and The Clear Cut Future and in the journals Other Voices, New Letters, Coal City Review, The Oregon Quarterly, Brainchild, Golden Handcuffs, and others. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Oregon and an MA in English from the University of Illinois at Chicago. She lives in Seattle with her son, Asher, and teaches English and writing at Pierce College.

MEDIA ARTS
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Britta Johnson (Seattle) received a BA from Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota in 1997. She has been doing stop motion animation in Seattle for more than 10 years; she directs shorts and has made music videos for bands including Lusine, Andrew Bird, and Minus the Bear. Her film collaborations with musicians have shown in places including Seattle’s Henry Art Gallery, On the Boards, Giant Magnet, the PICA’s TBA festival, the Walker Art Center, MassMoCA, and the Boston MFA. Her recent works include 21 Landings, a looping video installation, and Waterway, a film about drainage commissioned by Seattle Public Utilities. www.thekmpi.net

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~Dayna Hanson (Seattle) is a filmmaker, multi-disciplinary artist and 2006 Guggenheim Fellow in choreography who has been creating film and video work for over 15 years. She has directed short narrative, experimental and dance films that have been screened in festivals worldwide, including Los Angeles International Short Film Festival and New York Film Festival. Dayna was co-artistic director of internationally touring dance theater company 33 Fainting Spells and has performed her own work at On the Boards and Northwest Film Forum. She is currently working on a narrative feature film, Improvement Club (formerly Rainbow). www.daynahanson.com

MUSIC ARTS
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Wayne Horvitz (Seattle) is a composer, pianist, and electronic musician. He has performed all over the world; performing and collaborating with Bill Frisell, Butch Morris, John Zorn, Robin Holcomb, Fred Frith, Julian Priester, among others. He has been commissioned by the NEA, Meet The Composer, Kronos String Quartet, Seattle Chamber Players, Mary Flagler Cary Trust, PGAFF, BAM and others. Collaborators include Paul Taylor, Liz Lerman Dance Exchange, Gus Van Sant and Gordon Edelstein. He is the 2001 recipient of the Artist Trust Fellowship Award, 2003 and 2006 recipient of the City of Seattle Office of Arts and Culture fellowship, 2002 recipient of the Rockefeller Map Grant for JOE HILL, 16 Actions for Chamber Orchestra, Voices and Improviser, and the 2008 NEA American Masterpieces grant for These Hills of Glory for string quartet and improviser. www.waynehorvitz.net
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~Paul Kikuchi (Seattle) is a percussionist, instrument builder, and composer from Indianola, WA. He performs in a variety of ensembles, including the Empty Cage Quartet and Orkestar Zirkonium. He runs Prefecture Records, a small record label that specializes in experimental percussion based music. Paul’s invented instruments are constructed sculpturally and tonally utilizing scrap and found objects, and are featured in ensembles such as Tide Tables and Open Graves. His compositions have been premiered at venues across the United States and Europe. In recent years Paul has received artistic support and funding from Chamber Music America, Artist Trust, and Montalvo Center for the Arts, among others. http://paulkikuchi.com
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*Gregory Yasinitsky (Pullman), composer and saxophonist, has over 140 published musical works which are performed in more than 30 countries in six continents around the world. He regularly accepts commissions for orchestral, jazz and chamber works, and is the recipient of grants and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Meet the Composer West, The Commission Project, Washington State Music Teachers Association, Washington Music Educators Association and ASCAP. Yasinitsky is a Regents Professor of Music and Coordinator of Jazz Studies at Washington State University.

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*These awards are provided through generous funding from the Washington State Arts Commission. ~These awards are provided through generous funding from Washington Womens’ Foundation. +This award is provided through generous funding from Amazon.com.

This year’s Fellowships are made possible, in part, through generous gifts from Nancy and Buster Alvord, Chap and Eve Alvord, Michael and Cathy Casteel, Betsy and Peter Currie, Katharyn Alvord Gerlich, Leonard and Norma Klorfine Foundation, Jennifer McCausland, Mia McEldowney and Bill Mitchell, Nancy Skinner Nordhoff and Lynn Hays, The Offield Family Foundation, Gladys Rubinstein, Rob Short and Emer Dooley, Jon & Mary Shirley Foundation, Catherine Eaton Skinner and David Skinner, Merrill Wagner and Bob Ryman, the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, and all contributors to our annual fund.

Support for the Meet the Artist Program comes from: PONCHO and Target.

Statistics for the 2009 Artist Trust Fellowship

Applicants and Recipients from Each Discipline
Craft: 82 applicants; 3 recipients
Literary: 194 applicants; 8 recipients
Media: 47 applicants; 2 recipients
Music: 59 applicants; 3 recipients

Locations of Applicants
King County: 246
Western Washington (excluding King County): 91
Eastern Washington: 34
Central Washington:16

A total of 382 artists in Washington State applied this year.
16 artists were awarded Fellowships.

For a list of 2009 Fellowship Panelists visit here.