In June 2003, Artist Trust awarded $48,805 in Grants for Artist Projects (GAP) to 36 outstanding Washington State artists. The GAP Program provides up to $1,400 to individual artists for various projects. In 2003, Artist Trust received a record 772 applications from artists working in all disciplines across Washington State.
The information included in each grant recipient profile below is based on each recipient’s application materials submitted at the time of application. Please search our Artist Registry for more information on these artists.
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INTERDISCIPLINARY
Ellen Fullman, Seattle, King County, ($1,400) to assist in studio rental expenses in preparation for an upcoming series of collaborations at Stichting INTRO/in situ in Maastricht, Holland. An accomplished musician, Fullman has been playing the Long String Instrument (LSI)—the artist’s own invention—for twenty years. The instrument requires at least fifty feet of studio space. For Fullman, the most important collaborator participating in the series is the American composer and cellist, Frances-Marie Utti. “Frances is fascinated by the intonation and partials she hears in the LSI. We feel our instruments will merge, intersect, and camouflage each other. This opportunity in Holland will enable us to begin to realize the potential of our collaboration. Documentary materials from this performance will be used to seek future engagements.” www.ellenfullman.com
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Jason Puccinelli, Seattle, King County, ($1,400) to help defray production costs of Biorama, an interactive installation that fuses the unique characteristics of two different environments; the first being a natural history museum where the indigenous habitat of "some human culture" is exhibited in front of a painted diorama; the second environment is a photo booth akin to those found at a country fair in which you dress up and pose in old west clothing for a portrait.” By fusing these environments, Biorama will allow participants to become the specimen on display. Participants will be supplied with dressing room and attire. After dressing, they will enter the set and pose for their portrait. Among the environments to be created are: 1) Meat Packing Plant, 2) Fast Food Counter, 3) Miss America Beauty Pageant, 4) Television News Anchor Desk. Biorama is slated to show at Consolidated Works.
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LITERATURE
Kelli Russell Agodon, Kingston, Kitsap County, ($1,400) to cover expenses incurred while trying to find a publisher for her recently completed collection of poems Beginning to Speak, including reading fees required by many poetry book prize competitions, computer and printing costs, and personal time to complete each application. The collection is based on one woman’s experience with passion, family, religion, and her struggle with breast cancer. “I chose the title of the manuscript to reflect the many things we still do not talk about in our histories and in our own lives. The narrator of these poems is just beginning to tell her stories, just beginning to speak.” www.agodon.com
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Dorsey Davis, Seattle, King County, ($1,400) to defray some living expenses while completing upcoming episodes of an ongoing manuscript. A Plumber’s Diary is a series of fictional diary entries as told by Paul Zurn, its central character. “Culled from my own experience as a plumber, Paul’s work leads him from the boiler rooms of the Bronx to the kitchens of the suburban Pacific Northwest. Through Paul’s often struggling and spiritually lonely entries I am attempting to describe not only an aspect of myself but the current American working class dilemma.” The GAP award will enable the completion of episodes 2-6 for publication.
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Darren Higgins, Seattle, King County, ($1,000) to help defray research costs for an ongoing story collection organized around the activity and idea of walking. “What I’m exploring is the activity itself, the way our experience of a landscape is shaped by our passing through it, and the way the landscape, in turn, shapes us. I’ve always been struck by our complex responses to different settings (wilderness areas, rural expanses, cities, small towns) and intrigued by the way architecture and design have been employed to provide pleasure (e.g., Olmstead’s urban parks) and to provoke fear and awe (e.g., Speer’s plan for Germania).” GAP funding will help Higgins further explore the wealth of landscapes, built and natural, in the Puget Sound region and complement his outings with books and related texts.
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Frances McCue, Seattle, King County, ($1,400) to take a one-month sabbatical from her job as Executive Director of the Richard Hugo House and complete a manuscript of poems, thereby allowing the time necessary to make final revisions and address sequence of the project as a whole. “The Flaneur Poems is a collection that explores how women take on different artistic, cultural and scientific roles as they roam the city. A “flaneur” is a term taken from Baudelaire that is typically a dandy who wanders the city looking for artistic moments. I want to extract the term from its 19th century masculine confines and bring it into the present. Some of the poems are written from the point of view of an architect and some from the point of view of an androgynous flaneur.”
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Jennifer Munro, Seattle, King County, ($1,400) to defray living costs for a month while completing a memoir manuscript and preparing it for publication. “Not Suitable for Children is a memoir-style collection of edgy personal essays—written with humor and honesty—about fertility issues, including miscarriage, infertility treatments, adoption, stillbirth and the impact on a relationship. The book endeavors to portray that life can be funny and full despite the trials of pregnancy loss.” GAP funding will allow the author to re-draft rough versions of the essays to be included and “stitch the individual essays into a unified book.” www.munrojd.com
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Michael Shilling, Seattle, King County, ($1,400) to help defray living costs for a month while completing a short story manuscript. “Three of the twelve stories to be included in the collection have appeared in literary magazines and GAP funding will give me time to finish the remaining stories. I’m hoping these stories will be published in book form… this award focuses me to increase the discipline and devotion to my work.”
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MEDIA
Luke Allen, Seattle, King County, ($1,400) to offset theater and equipment expenses and artist fees for Echo. Echo, an evening-length dance, video and sound concert premiered at Consolidated Works earlier this year. The piece focuses on five women caught between the emerging landscapes of video and stage. The video was a composite of time-distorted movement and sharp juxtapositions of harsh animated shapes and sensual human forms, layered and projected from many angles, often completely immersing the dancers. “In many ways the textural nature of the video mirrors or amplifies the movement created by the dancers. At times an extension of the thoughts and emotions of the characters, and at others a visceral environment for them to move through…the dancers become a three dimensional moving canvas as the video directs the focus of the environment.”
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Wes Kim, Seattle, King County, ($1,400) to finance various aspects related to the production of Receiver, including camera and lighting rental, film stock, crew stipends, processing, HD transfers, postproduction, and film prints. Receiver is a short film that will be shot in super-16 format in or near Seattle, and transferred to HD video for finishing. In the script, written by Kim, the protagonist has the ability to hear other people’s thoughts. Kim emphasizes that, “this ability is not depicted in a simplistic or exploitative way. Rather, it is used as a metaphor for the protagonist’s sensitivity to the emotions of the people around him and the choice he makes between shutting himself off from society and opening himself up to the risks and rewards of making connections with others.” www.weskim.com
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Cheryl Slean, Seattle, King County, ($1,400) to supplement income during a period devoted to the completion of a feature-length screenplay called Triptik. Slean expects to co-produce and direct this dramatic narrative, which is based on one of her own short stories. To date, she has written, directed, co-produced, and co-edited three short films with the support of her production company, fin films. The second film short, The Art of Waiting, has been screened at both national and international film festivals and has aired on US public television. It also won the “Golden Knight” award for Best Short at the Malta International Film Festival.
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PERFORMING
Pat Graney, Seattle, King County, ($1,400) to pay rehearsal fees for The Vivian Girls. Artist Henry Darger inspires the proposed new work. Darger’s work was discovered in his apartment after his death and consisted of many large-scale watercolor paintings and a 15,000 page text describing the trials and tribulations of ‘the Vivian girls’ in the Realms of the Unreal. As in Tattoo, Graney’s most recent full-length performance, she hopes to create with The Vivian Girls “an entirely new movement vocabulary.”
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Carolyn Graye, Seattle, King County, ($1,400) to hire an on-site engineer to set up and record a live performance of Poems by Denise Levertov with the goal of producing a CD. A collection of poems by Ms. Levertov will be set to music that Graye has composed for a small jazz ensemble. The project was started in 1997, shortly before Ms. Levertov’s death, and was launched with her permission and participation. Graye is currently a columnist for All About Jazz (formerly Jazz Steps) and offers private instruction in jazz voice, piano and theory. www.carolyngraye.com
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Wayne Horvitz, Seattle, King County, ($1,400) to offset expenses related to professionally recording Mountain Language. In 2002, Horvitz received a grant from the Seattle Arts Commission that allowed him to revise a number of pieces composed for string quartet, string quintet and quintet plus percussion, and to hire musicians to rehearse and perform the revised compositions. These pieces were performed in January 2003 at the Esther Claypool Gallery. An accomplished composer, pianist, and keyboardist, Horvitz has performed extensively throughout Europe, Japan, and North America. He is a leader and principal composer for the bands Pigpen, Zony Mash and co-leader of the NY Composers Orchestra. www.waynehorvitz.com
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Todd J. Moore, Seattle, King County, ($1,400) to defray expenses related to travel and lodging while completing research for a performance project called Smedley Butler: Maverick Marine, an accapella musical revue that will include Moore and four other actors/singers. General Smedley Butler, America’s most highly decorated soldier and veteran of campaigns in over ten countries, became radicalized in later life and toured the nation speaking out against American “imperialism” and the influence of “big business” on American military policy. Moore will travel to West Chester, PA, Quantico, VA, and Washington DC to visit the Butler family, the Marine Historical Archives and Butler’s primary biographer, Hans Schmidt, respectively.
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Amy O'Neal, Seattle, King County, ($1,400) to help defray the costs of a new work to be performed at the Little Theater this winter. Performed in collaboration with musician Zeke Keeble and dancers Ellie Sandstrom and Mark Haim, this new project features choreography and video installation by O’Neal in addition to her primary role as performer. “The choreography will challenge ideas of confinement and memory while challenging the expectations of the presentational venue. The video installation will be in the storefront window as people come in and will feature appearances by over thirty people you may know.”
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Tina Pilonetti, Seattle, King County, ($1,400) to offset expenses related to the travel, study, and rehearsal required in preparation for the performance of What Survives Remains. This dance commemorates the murder of Pilonetti’s best friend, Jocelyn Sandberg. The 45-minute performance combines her extensive background in modern dance with her study of the Japanese Butoh dance form, in addition to her knowledge of kung fu, tai chi, and self-defense techniques. The performance weaves a story of confrontation with grief, the fall into madness, rage, sacrifice, redemption, and silence. It is Pilonetti’s goal to perform What Survives Remains on the one-year anniversary of her friend’s death at The Colorado College. Funding will help cover costs related to traveling to Colorado and travel to British Columbia to study with her teacher, the Mexican Butoh master Diego Pionn.
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Amy Wheeler, Seattle, King County, ($1,400) to defray living expenses and rehearsal costs while finishing the first draft of (Not in) Our Town and preparing for a staged reading at Capitol Hill Arts Center. The idea for this play is rooted in school violence. “It was (several years ago) after another school shooting—this time in California—and I was struck by the phrase repeated by neighbors and townspeople following these unfathomable events: ‘This doesn’t happen in our town.’ With Thornton Wilder’s classic play Our Town as a starting point, Wheeler will use theatre and video to illuminate the images and values we cling to, while exploring our collective denial of the darker realities that define who we are.
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VISUAL
Ben Beres, Zac Culler, and John Sutton, Seattle, King County, ($1,400) to help defray the costs incurred from a series of mobile installations by the artist team. “On the back of a flatbed trailer, the installations will travel in the fashion of a turn-of-the-century carnival, arriving at each location every two months with a new installation for the public to view. The piece meets three goals we have set for ourselves: reaching a larger audience, inverting the traditional gallery experience, and taking art to the people who might not otherwise come into contact with it on their own.”
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Kendra Brock, Vashon, King County, ($1,400) to complete a series of seven figures from adobe-like clay and to help pay for raw materials, artist fees for applications, and documentation related to the project. “I want to create a cohesive body of seven figures that are based on images from my childhood. I am currently finding a space that will allow me to create the experience of walking through rooms in a house, with smaller groupings of the seven figures in their respective rooms.”
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Nancy Deal, Seattle, King County, ($1,400) to purchase equipment for the creation of multi-functional jewelry, including a rolling mill, hydraulic press and such materials as gold, nickel, neoprene, Mylar, and polyester resin. After Deal’s principal gallery closed recently, she felt compelled to “experiment with a new body of work that makes a statement about the modern world.” Constructing wearable jewelry that serves more than one purpose, Deal comments on the idea of survival in uncertain times. “A pendant that conceals objects necessary to one’s survival would be a provocative commentary on our modern lives. Similarly, a compartmentalized bracelet that straps on your wrist carrying emergency pills or packets.”
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Marc Dombrosky, Seattle, King County, ($1,400) to further the documentation of 98101. Dombrosky’s works are “investigations of overlooked spaces and mundane events.” Since 1988, he has been making rubbings on walls in rooms in which he has lived and worked in an attempt to decipher the patterns they contain. During the last exhibition of this work, Dombrosky hired a professional photographer to document the space and catalogue the relationship between the viewer and the drawings. “The photographs become, in many ways, an extension of the work itself. By expanding the ways in which I record this project (its components and environments), I hope to gain insight into how (and where) the work can develop.” Dombrosky plans to use funds to defray the costs of self-publishing a book documenting this work, and to further collaborative efforts with local photographers.
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Shannon Eakins, Seattle, King County, ($1,400) to research potential materials for her sensory sculptures. “My most recent works are wind-up toys cast in precious metals. Casting the materials from unrelated existing toys, they were altered to represent specific animal movements: bobbing, swatting, pulling ears back, and lowering of the head. The work deals with the clash of human versus animal values.” With GAP funding, Eakins seeks to continue her investigations by addressing a broader range of sensory phenomena. “Sound, smell, pulse and body temperature would give a greater richness to the work because it would deal with things that animals are more likely to use to interact with one another.”
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Ann Gale, Seattle, King County, ($1,400) to pay for model fees and painting supplies in relation to a series focusing on the representation of the human figure. “These portraits concentrate on the psychology of visual relationships. In order to understand the complexity of a person within a specific context, I must rely on extreme observation over extended periods. Working with models opens up the physical possibilities of what the figures in my paintings can do… this work is about the intimate process of sensation and observation, no photographs or representational formulas could replace this specific experience. Working strictly from observation, Gale will be able to increase her modeling time and undertake a larger project as a result.
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Gail Hustedde, Bainbridge Island, Kitsap County, ($1,400) to attend a two-week intensive ceramic workshop with Sam Chung, a nationally recognized studio potter and professor, at the Haystack School of Crafts in Deer Isle, Maine. This workshop will employ both slab construction and wheel-thrown techniques to focus on the creation of teapots, ewers, and pitchers. Completed work will be fired in a salt kiln. “Function has become central to my vessel-making and this workshop’s focus on pouring pots with the integration of wheel-thrown elements and pattern-making in slab construction will provide a faster building of basic forms on which to develop a series. The salt firing component of this workshop will expand my current knowledge and open up new possibilities for glazing and firing my work.”
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Kathlyn Leighton, Bellevue, King County, ($1,400) to defray material costs and allow for studio time on Shoe Stories, an ongoing project wherein beaded mosaics take the form of shoes and thereby visualize a story. “The first goal of this project is to identify with the stories represented and to stimulate the viewers’ own personal memories. Another goal is to broaden public awareness towards a non-traditional medium—beads as art. Art that is defined by the vision it represents not the medium representing it.” Drawn from verbal stories, Leighton first works on paper and then designs a shoe pattern that is, in turn, fitted to the shoes. And then the labor-intensive application of beads begins.
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Karen Liebowitz, Seattle, King County, ($1,400) to professionally document six completed murals and promote herself as a muralist through new slides and a website. “My interest in mural work began when the content of my own work had grown, and the paintings needed to exist on a large scale to support the archetypal nature of the scenes depicted. I am attempting to merge this form of public art with the content of my paintings without compromising either.” Having recently researched fresco techniques at Skowhegan School of Painting, Liebowitz plans on becoming more involved with public works, in part because of “the satisfaction of creating art that has a specific purpose and place.”
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Zhi Lin, Seattle, King County, ($1,400) to cover a portion of the model fees for three new large-scale screen paintings entitled Invisible People: Chinese Railroad Workers. Planned to measure 5 feet by 15 feet, the screens will be composed according to Chinese tradition: each of them will be painted on both sides and each side will feature a scene with over one hundred near life-size figures. “To paint images on both sides of the screen, and to confront the audience with two versions of history is to attempt to reveal the concealed and neglected part of the history of the American transcontinental railroads. I need to use life models and will hire native Chinese to be my models. They will wear clothes that date back to over one hundred years ago.”
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Paul Margolis, Seattle, King County, ($1,400) to support the documentation of a solo show at the Cultural Development Authority’s Gallery and likewise his contribution to an upcoming group show at Bumbershoot. Margolis works with quilting and sewing in both his sculptural and two-dimensional work. “For the upcoming group show ‘Fashion Is Art’, I will make a quilted suit for myself and a quilted dress for my girlfriend. The shapes and colors that begin on my suit will move across and end on her dress. The outfit will intimate our connection and draw people in with its detailed patterns.”
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Saya Moriyasu, Seattle, King County, ($1,400) to help defray costs for an upcoming show at the Northwest Craft Center Gallery, including kiln firing, promotional materials and documentation. Moriyasu works with ceramics and her upcoming piece, Ghost Banquet, expands upon a previous body of work, Service, which is comprised of a series of rotating “clay figures that all have to do with serving.” In the new work, the servers will be of the banquet variety, meant to serve without being noticed. “I am interested in servers as observers of events in other people’s lives. The Ghost Servers (all white clay holding trays) will be in a large circle rotating one direction and in the middle will be the restaurant patrons (a colorful, lively group in miniature) rotating in the opposite direction.
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Linda Peschong, Seattle, King County, ($500) to purchase an Epson printer and ink as well as to better document recent work. Often working on collaborative efforts, Peschong employs a host of different materials in her sculptures and installations.” My newest pieces are arriving around the concept of integrating digitally composed photographic images and soft vinyl sculpture. I’ve already invested in a professional camera and new software towards realizing these pieces and other temporary media installations.”
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Nancy Peterfreund, Seattle, King County, ($1,400) to purchase photographic paper, framing materials, and postcards and flyers for an upcoming show. Peterfreund has been documenting the residential and industrial habitats in Seattle’s Duwamish and South Park neighborhood. “The project aims to reveal beauty in the commonplace, and the visual and personal impact of ongoing transitions in the area—subtle and dramatic movements of equipment, arrivals and departures of residents and transients, destruction and removal of structures, and efforts to clean up the natural environment.” The work will be shown by two local community groups, People for Puget Sound and the Duwamish River Cleanup Coalition.
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Elise Richman, Seattle, King County, ($1,200) to cover developing costs for six 42’’x48’’ digital prints. These prints will be made from slides of a new, yet to be completed series of 6’’x6’’ oil paintings composed of dots that “maintain their integrity as pieces of paint while being subsumed into a larger environment. The dots are obsessively layered to create a sculptural field of color.” GAP funding will allow Richman to display a large digital print alongside the small original painting.
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Toi Sennhauser, Seattle, King County, ($1,400) to design and build a working re-creation of a Thai street vendor's cart, with which she will be making deep fried men and women's underwear made from pastry dough. “These intimate delicacies will be served with three dipping sauces aimed at erotically and intellectually challenging the participants: pomegranate-pepper, white chocolate cherry, and honey-cream.” This performative piece is scheduled to be part of THREAD's "Fashion Is Art" show at Bumbershoot. Sennhauser seeks to reference and analyze "Thailand's sex industry... and the widely held impression and stereotype that Thai women are programmed for sex rather than their own humanity." Using food as an ingredient in many of her installation performances, Sennhauser has engaged audiences in such art venues as Soil Gallery, Consolidated Works, and Noodle Work Studios. "Common foods can take on a new meaning when their form is changed, and individuals can be forced to examine their thoughts about food and sexuality on both a personal and public level," offers Sennhauser. www.toisennhauser.com 
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Randy Wood, Seattle, King County, ($1,300) to construct a “meditation hut” and cover travel expenses in order to attend and facilitate installation of his work in a traveling exhibit. As one of eight artists participating in “the Push Project”, a visual art exhibition exploring the aesthetics of skateboarding culture within the context of contemporary art, Wood will create new watercolor designs for skateboards and build and install a “meditation hut” to accompany his works. Wood will travel to California and New York to install his work. The show first appeared at Roq La Rue Gallery in Seattle. www.randywoodart.com
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Jim Woodring, Seattle, King County, ($1,400) to purchase a Halley easel, a halogen floor lamp, a taboret, sable brushes, brush cleaner, and paint. “For the past ten years I have been creating a series of charcoal drawings representing various aspects of a personal vision which I have nurtured and exploited since childhood.” Since 2001, Woodring has begun to make oil paintings based on these drawings. He intends to use the equipment and supplies purchased with grant funding to begin Worse and Worse, the crucial image from the series of drawings. www.jimwoodring.com
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