In 2006, Artist Trust awarded $70,033 in Grants for Artist Projects (GAP) to 52 outstanding Washington State artists. The GAP program provides up to $1,400 to individual artists for various projects. In 2006, Artist Trust received 690 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.

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EMERGING & CROSS-DISCIPLINARY

Tania Kupczak, Seattle, ($1,030) to purchase materials for the creation of a permanent site-specific installation. Using a topographical map of a site yet to be decided upon, Kupszak will take the legend and borrow its colors and symbols to create a new sound and image installation. The installation will take place in the elevator at On the Boards, Seattle. Those entering the elevator will move through a space that corresponds visually, using color and symbols, to the legend of the topographical map. Audio will enhance the immersive experience. Target date for completion of the project is August 2006.

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Jesse Paul Miller, Seattle, ($1,300) to purchase upgraded equipment and software for continued development of his image/sound installations and sculptural work. Miller creates environments that combine line drawings of landscapes and traveled to locales with audio field recordings from those locations. His drawings and recordings are made concurrently and recombined to create new destinations. His newest work was exhibited at Electric Heavyland, Seattle, in July 2006.

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James Van Leuven, Seattle, ($1,400) for software, research and development related to his interactive and collaborative music practice. Experimenting with transforming a laptop computer into a playable instrument that easily improvised with, Van Leuven “Laptop Orchestra Project”, will create the first laptop orchestra. Built up into sections and chairs like a traditional orchestra, Van Leuven’s project will include eight instruments in the percussion section (covers all tone-less rhythmic sounds), four instruments in the high-range section (tones 2000hz-20000hz), four instruments in the midrange section (tones 500hz–2000hz), four instruments in the bass section (tones 20hz–500hz).

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LITERATURE

Wendy Call, Seattle, ($1,400) to help cover the expense of travel and research for her book entitled No Word for Welcome. Call’s non-fiction, narrative writing revolves around border crossings and the movement of people and money. This book focuses on the lives of three residents from Native villages in a region of southern Mexico called the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, and follows their lives as they grapple with the economic, cultural, and personal impacts of economic globalization.

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Johnny Horton, Seattle, ($1,400) to cover the cost of materials associated with the submitting of poetry manuscripts and to assist with expenses associated with attending an upcoming writing residency. Horton is finishing a book-length collection of poems entitled Oedipus Re(du)x which he hopes to publish by the end of 2007.

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Jenifer Lawrence, Poulsbo, ($1,400) to cover promotional and travel expenses associated with the publication of her full-length poetry manuscript entitled One Hundred Steps From Shore. Themes explored in her work include the aftermath of trauma, how death and the way a family perceives and deals with dying, affect and shape our lives. Blue Begonia.

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Erin Malone, Seattle, ($1,400) to cover entry fees, copying, and printing materials associated with sending out copies of her poetry manuscript. Malone’s project, entitled What Sound Does it Make, is a poetry manuscript that explores themes of new motherhood, postpartum depression and the implicit identity and relationship struggles arising from such conditions.

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Melanie Noel, Seattle, ($1,400) to take time to write and complete a sequence of 18-20 poems to be combined with field recordings and instrumentation. Performed with a looping pedal and laboratory field recordings, “the poems will begin from inside the voices of viruses having recurring dreams and explore part of my larger interest in science and medicine…and how the unseen operates in our lives and environment,” says Noel.

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Gary Parks, Shoreline, ($1,000) to help defray the costs of submitting his fiction manuscript to publishers and book competitions. Park’s new work is a recently completed collection of short stories entitled Unsettled Seasons. Almost all the stories, “deal with unsettled characters that are exploring, often with awkward or dangerous choices, how they fit with their society, their locale, and even their own developing psyches”, says Parks.

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Maria Cristina Rangel, Moses Lake, ($1,400) to take time to write and complete her first book-length fiction manuscript. The writer plans to complete 6-8 new stories, work on revisions of completed stories, and collate the stories into a cohesive manuscript. Rangel says of her work: “As a queer Chicana writer and the daughter of migrant Mexican farmworkers who settled in Washington state, I endeavor to not only produce quality literary work through my writing, but to also speak to my family’s experiences of immigration and migration, and my experience as a queer Latina femme coming of age in the agricultural fields of rural Washington state.”

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Annette Spaulding-Convy, Kingston, ($1,400) to provide time to write and defray costs associated with looking for a publisher. The writer is currently working on completing a full-length poetry manuscript entitled In The Convent We Become Clouds which is centered on six years the writer spent as a Roman Catholic nun: “My poems explore the themes of modern women working within a patriarchal and outdated institution, self image, religious institution in conflict with society and pop-culture, the natural sexual tensions inherent in a celibate lifestyle, and re-integration into secular society,” says Spaulding-Convy of her poems.

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MEDIA

Webster Crowell, Seattle, ($1,400) to assist with expenses associated with his current film project, Parasol. A seven-minute animated film created through a process called rotoscoping (which is live action film then translated into animation), Parasol also mixes interludes of Pixelation (animated live actors and objects) into the sequence which are then hand traced into individual frames. The artist anticipates that it will take eight months to complete the project and should be ready in early 2007.

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Stefan Gruber, Seattle, ($1,400) to help defray expenses while working on his film project, Petting Zoo. A 7-minute animation piece built using hand-drawn animation techniques both on paper and directly painted into a digital format. With each cell hand-drawn (in both formats), the artist estimates it will take two years to complete the film.

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Matt Wilkins, Tukwila, ($1,400) to help pay actors involved with his current film project. Beginning in September of 2006, production begins on the second Sisyphus Production feature entitled Animal Within. Based on a completed 83-page screenplay (also from the artist), Within will utilize the flexibility of remote camera digital video and so experiment with various animal points-of-view.

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PERFORMING

Byron Au Yong, Seattle, ($1,400) to defray costs of creating a solo performance opera Stuck Elevator that will be based on the true story of a Chinese Restaurant delivery man that finds himself stranded in an elevator for three days. The artist will use the award to develop the sound for his piece, including: composition time, additional work with vocalists, and field recordings of elevator sounds for the final performance mix.

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Jherek Bischoff, Seattle, ($1,400) to help offset the costs of purchasing new equipment as well as provide assistance during the composing and recording of a group of orchestral songs. Bischoff hopes to improve his skills as a musician, engineer, producer, composer and conductor with the completion of this solo project. Upon finishing the series of new compositions, the artist plans to look for a record label to release it.

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Bill Horist, Seattle, ($1,400) to help defray the cost of mixing sessions with a studio engineer. Horist is currently working in collaboration with other artists towards the completion of a new set of music that he describes as “…the sum of my total experience as an artist, composer, arranger, conductor, director and producer.” He hopes the new compositions will be released in the fall of 2007.

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Brian Kooser, Seattle, ($1,400) to assist with development of UFO the Puppet Show, a musical puppet comedy featuring Kooser’s work as a master puppet maker. “UFO the Puppet Show asks the question ‘What would aliens do if ‘Nazi Scientists’ created a perfect Aryan Soldier who moved to America, became a movie star and ultimately was elected Governor of California (perhaps president of the USA)?,’ says Kooser. The artist hopes to be ready for his first performance between February and summer of 2007.

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Amy O’Neal, Seattle, ($1,400) to purchase new video and recording equipment to help complete her project mockumentary, a collaborative performance piece integrating dance, music, and video. O’Neal says the performance will “explore the act of self-mythology by interweaving, cock-eyed, fictional scenarios about themselves that the performers develop in collaboration.” Performances are planned at On the Boards in Seattle, October 19-26, 2006, and the project will tour nationally in 2007.

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Peggy Piacenza, Seattle, ($1,400) to take time for exploration and development of costume, set, music and text that will culminate in the creation of a thirty minute solo performance. Piacenza is currently working in collaboration with choreographer Debra Hay, and performers Amelia Reeber and Dayna Hanson on a project entitled Mountain that will show at the T.B.A. Festival in Portland and at On the Boards in the coming year. Piacenza’s solo piece will be part of this larger work set to premiere at T.B.A in Portland this September.

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Tikka Sears, Seattle, ($1,400) to purchase equipment and materials to fully develop a new performance piece entitled Layar. Sears’ new piece will incorporate portable screens with video projection and her own intricate choreography to be synchronized between the screens and Sears’ live performance. Incorporating video interviews and oral histories exploring migration, regret and repetition, the video footage will also be projected directly onto the performers’ bodies. Sears is exploring “the actor’s body in relation to and in dialogue with multimedia projection.”

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Jami Sieber, Bremerton, ($1,400) to assist with the completion of The Equus Project, a collaborative project by the composer that places dancers and equine partners in close proximity and encourages the performers to engage the instinctive behavior of their equine partner. Much of the piece will take place in 30’x30’ round pens and will capture the intimate, and often unpredictable nature of creating performance work with human performers and horses. Sieber will perform electric cello throughout the duration of the piece, in addition to creating sung and spoken text that will illuminate the choreographic process as it unfolds between dancer and horse. The performance is scheduled for August 5, 2006 in Lewiston, Maine.

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Stephanie Timm, Seattle, ($1,400) to develop her full length play Break My Body. The playwright will take a two-week residency at Centrum in Port Townsend, Washington to explore the potential staging of her new work by engaging two workshops with a director, dramaturge, and rehearsal actors. The award defrays costs of these initial stages toward a final production.

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Deborah Wolf, Seattle, ($1,100) to help defray artist’s fees associated with the creation of a new performance piece. Wolf will choreograph this new work to solo guitar music and the piece will feature four male dancers. “I will follow the deep-seated aesthetic that threads through all of my work and is embodied in its muscular physicality, its relation to music, and it’s strong reliance on structure, which helps shape its ultimate content,” says the artist. The performance will be premiered in October at Velocity’s Mainspace Theater in Seattle.

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VISUAL

Mark Abrahamson, Stanwood, ($1,400) to complete and promote work on the “Global Warming” portion of his series Watershed Investigations. Using aerial photography, Abrahamson describes changes in the earth’s topography caused by human interference. “Global Warming” will concentrate on depicting geographical changes in the atmosphere caused by the burning of fossil fuels. Portions of the series to be completed include photographs of melting glaciers in the North Cascades. The new work will travel nationally over the coming year.

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Candace Beardslee, Duvall, ($1,400) to purchase materials in preparation for an upcoming show. The work consists of silver vessels and jewelry. “This award allows artists like myself to make the kind of art they are passionate about without having to worry quite as much about the bottom line,” says the artist. “With so many talented and worthy artists applying…it is humbling, uplifting and encouraging that my work was chosen for support.”

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Sami Ben Larbi, Seattle, ($1,400) for the production of a large-scale installation to be shown at Lawrimore Project Gallery, Seattle, this winter. The works will involve video projection, audio and audience participation. GAP funding will be used for the fabrication of booths, purchase and modification of projectors and cameras and the rental of projectors and a telephone switchboard. “I am a French/Tunisian artist interested in the shaping of identity and how that identity is externalized and communicated through physical gesture, social interaction and imposed architectural and social limitations,” says the artist, “my work is about the immediate physical experience of the viewers and how, through anonymity, their identities are transcribed through their actions.”

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BeresCullerSutton, Seattle, ($1,400) to purchase materials for a large-scale installation that will feature “sculptural chunks of land that appear to be ripped from the earth, hovering above the gallery floor. A house with trees, sections of sidewalk and a fire hydrant will float in the main space surrounded by an ethereal fog and sound elements.” The show will also feature photographs of past performances as well as a new video installation. BeresCullerSutton are three artists who work collaboratively through installation, performance, and sculpture.

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Leo Berk, Seattle, ($1400) for the purchase of materials and processes that will make possible a large-scale architectural work. In the past, Berk has created works for private clients, by commission, and to their specifications. “I would like to use this grant to free myself from the limitations of the commission relationship that has in the past made this [scale of] work possible. I am proposing, in essence, to commission myself to develop a...work to be shown at a public, non-profit venue.”

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Cris Bruch, Seattle, ($1400) for the documentation and promotion of new and future work. The projects to be documented include exhibitions at Kittredge Gallery, Tacoma (4/2006), Elizabeth Leach Gallery, Portland, Or. (6/2006), outdoor integrated sculpture, new Federal Courthouse, Eugene, Oregon (9/2006), a new bridge at Mount Si for which Bruch is the Design Team artist (5/2007), an outdoor sculpture for private development, Seattle, (1/2007) and new works to be shown at Lawrimore Project Gallery, Seattle. With this funding, new works will be professionally photographed for both slide and digital format. “Self-promotion is extremely important for artists, and often serves as our best means of securing future exhibitions or commissions and in maintaining relationships with arts professionals...” says the artist.

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Eduardo Calderón, Kirkland, ($1400) for a two-week residency in Cartagena de las Indias, Colombia. “It is a great opportunity to photograph in this port town that dates to 1533 and was the most important port in the Americas during the early years of the Spanish occupation,” says the artist. He adds, “It was built as a fortified port to protect the treasures being sent to Spain from South America and to receive everything coming to the Americas including the beginnings of the slave trade in the continent. Cartagena has, in addition to its well preserved historical architecture, a very unique and diverse population that combines the Native American culture with those of the descendants of the African slaves and the Spanish Colonials.” The photos from Calderón’s residency will be part an exhibit at Catherine Person Gallery, Seattle, in November.

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Drew Daly, Seattle, ($1400) to purchase materials for a new project. Daly intends to construct a series of large, free-standing lenses that “will alter that which is seen through them, essentially bending the space and objects on the opposite side from which one gazes,” says the artist. “My work is based on the idea of manipulating that which is ordinary to reveal something possibly unknown and unexpected.” Daly’s work can be seen at Greg Kucera Gallery in Seattle and then at Aqua Art Fair, Miami, later this year.

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Marc Dombrosky, Tacoma, ($1,400) to take time to create a new body of work that expands on his current practice of embroidering found and salvaged papers, envelopes, cardboard boxes and signs. Dombrosky meticulously mimics the marks on these objects using thread that closely approximates the line quality of the object, creating a new “topography” of and on the object. GAP funding will allow him to take on a more extensive project of “overwriting” an entire journal and manuscript that he has acquired. The artist says of his work “…these works suggest a loose conversation with our surroundings, our neighbors, our losses, and our memories.” Of the new work, he adds “this opportunity to engage complex narrative pieces is exciting and challenging, as these new acquisitions (by their length and content) potentially offer more insight into this project than anything else I’ve found and treated.”

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Natalie Dotzauer, Thorp, ($1,400) to create a site and time specific landscape/architectural installation. “For one night and one night only, I would like to turn the lights back on in old abandoned homes of Eastern Washington. With simple generators, halogen lights and a few props, beacons of light will dot the landscape; barns, sheds, outhouses, and homes will comprise a loop of drive-by installations on secondary highways and farm roads,” says the artist. Dotzauer plans on executing her installation in the fall of 2006. The locations will involve Kittitas Valley Highway 10, Thorp Highway, and possibly Highway 97 in Eastern Washington.

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Victoria Haven, Seattle, ($1,400) to help offset the expense of traveling for the purpose of installing her work. Haven’s work is part of a national traveling group show titled Over + Over that began showing in 2005 with shows scheduled in Austin, Texas, and possibly Florida remaining in 2006. Haven is the only Northwest artist represented in the show.

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Christopher Hoff, Seattle, ($1,400) to help with costs associated with travel to New York City for the purpose of working on location at the World Trade Center site. Hoff will create the second in a series of eleven oil paintings documenting the reconstruction of the site. “Conceptually, this series constitutes a vital extension of my work over the last decade which has focused on how the built environment informs the urban experience and how cyclical ebb and flow of its construction and demolition are in many ways analogous to the art making process,” says the artist. Hoff hopes to complete the second painting in 2007 and the entire series by 2016 as it fully documents the transformation of the site.

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Mary Iverson, Seattle, ($1,400) to defray the cost of materials for a solo show of sixteen new paintings at Davidson Contemporary, Seattle, that showed in June 2006. The artist says of her work: “My paintings are colorful abstractions that spring from the theme of the industrial shipping terminal. The canvases feature mass accumulations of shipping containers and container cranes in various perspectives. My work employs a network of searching perspective lines and layers of interlocking, colorful planes and rectangles that suggest both deep space and flat surface.”

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Amanda Koster, Seattle, ($1,400) to purchase materials and services for a new series of photographs. The artist plans to travel to Morocco to photograph female musicians of the Roudaniyate Tribe of southern Morocco and the female musicians of Chaouen of northern Morocco. These musicians practice an exclusively female tradition of singing praise songs to the regions Islamic saints as well as mystical songs in praise of the divine. The artist plans to produce and exhibit photographs from the trip that will be shown at the Northwest Folklife Festival in Seattle, 2006.

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Michelle Lamanet, Olympia, ($1,400) to purchase equipment and services related to getting her drawings, drawing installations, and book art project onto the Internet. The artist will use GAP funding to create a website where she can exhibit, promote and sell her work.

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Allison Manch, Seattle, ($800) to purchase materials and defray living expenses while the artist completes a new body of work. Manch’s interest in language (its use and misuse) has inspired her to document through portraiture, sound installation, and embroidery moments that the artist articulates as “possessing brilliant, unexpected potential”. Manch will embroider entire dictionary pages onto towels, sheets, and cotton handkerchiefs. The artist intends for the embroidered pages to serve as illuminated manuscripts for those challenged by words and their usage.

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Rachel Maxi, Seattle, ($1,400) to assist with travel expenses and defray the cost of equipment that needed for a new body of work. The new series will continue Maxi’s painting exploration of the urban landscape. Adding new theme which the artist calls “light environments”, specifically the swimming pools and golf courses of desert California, Maxi will show the new work at Baas Gallery, Seattle, in October 2006.

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Anna McKee, Seattle, ($900) for travel and related expenses to developing a new suite of etchings. The artist has been awarded a studio assistantship at the Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina to attend an etching workshop and gather source material for a new series. Prior to the workshop McKee will continue research toward an ongoing series of prints about segregation and exploring what the artist calls “often romanticized mythology of this region”.

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Brad A. Miller, Seattle, ($1,400) to purchase 3D modeling software that will enable the artist to “reproduce correct angles of the sun anywhere in the world anytime of the year; render water surfaces and falling water that reacts properly to the laws of gravity; import existing architectural computer models of the space where an artwork is to be sited; and render realistic properties of light since the physics of light are important in many of my works.” Miller will create models of two large-scale public art projects and site-specific installations as the first of many projects employing this new software.

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Saya Moriyasu, Seattle, ($1,400) to create new work and upgrade workspace to accommodate the new work. Moriyasu plans to complete a work in progress that consists of oversized, three-dimensional chandeliers that are based on scenes in Japanese landscape paintings. The new work will draw from ideas and materials of a previous work titled “Lamplight Lavish Gathering”. The work will be on display at Gallery4Culture, Seattle, in October of 2006.

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Brian Murphy, Seattle, ($1,400) to support his ongoing studio practice. Murphy is a painter with a focus on self-portraiture. “I paint self-portraits to become visible. I am interested in the idea of self-reflection and self-conscientiousness and in the potential of chance. I paint from direct observation, and, being available as both artist and model, I work from life directly. For me the daily practice of painting can be revealing and truthful,” says Murphy.

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Linda Peschong, Seattle, ($1,098) to purchase supplies and equipment for continued development of the artist’s latest series of digitally composed images. Peschong is working on a body of work that explores combining images taken of scenes from various animal dioramas at the Denver Museum of Natural History with elements of images taken by the artist of actual natural environments. In this new series of images, the artist continues her exploration of “the possibility that an image can portray something that is as ‘real’ as its source.”

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Teresa Redden, Seattle, ($1,400) to purchase equipment, materials, professional documentation services and promotion related to her studio practice as a sculptor. Redden creates small scale sculptures composed of individual rings of white, 24-pound acid free paper that are woven together in planned sequences and affixed into stationary forms. The delicate pieces are small enough to fit into the palm of the hand and can take up to 160 hours of labor per individual sculpture.

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Jodi Rockwell, Seattle, ($1,400) to purchase video equipment and pay for classes on editing and lighting. Rockwell creates large scale, “entropic” installations. Rockwell’s installations often involve the erosion, oxidation, melting, and dissolution of organic substances. The artist would like to explore different forms of documentation in order to help evolve her work into new presentational formats.

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Samantha Scherer, Seattle, ($1,400) for production, presentation, and documentation of a new body of pen and ink with watercolor drawings. Scherer is investigating how the media imprints our imaginations and perceptions of fame. Tentatively entitled “Weekly Victims”, Scherer’s new pieces will focus on the weekly television series Law and Order from which she will create framed drawings based on the more than 370 murder victims (and counting) depicted on the show over the course of its run (the longest in television history). The new installation will be part of a show at Kirkland Arts Center Help me, I’m Hurt in September 2007.

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Todd Simeone, Seattle, ($1,400) to purchase materials, equipment and pay for production costs related to a new body of photographs and sculpture. Simeone’s is currently working on an installation that involves up to six large-scale digitally manipulated photographs and two sculptural pieces. The artist describes his new work as “a selected portion of my own environment in a gallery setting. Single objects that hold some significance to me will be photographed with a large format camera, scanned in, and digitally manipulated to reflect ideas. They are then scaled accordingly, printed and framed.” The series was shown at James Harris Gallery this past June.

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Elizabeth Smith, Indianola, ($1,400) to help purchase a new etching press and related materials that will enable a new series of prints. The series, entitled Arboreta, will consist of 20 intaglio limited edition prints. By owning a press and having it in her studio, Smith will cut down on travel time previously committed to traveling to Seattle in order to print her work.

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Alice Tippit, Seattle, ($1,255) for expenses related to finishing and promoting a new body of work. Tippit’s installation, The Artful Scheme of Happiness, combines her work with the collaboration of another artist and consists of more than thirty new pieces. Drawings, paintings and sculptures explore the theme of eccentricity as it relates to behavior, boundaries and individualism in an increasingly homogenized world. The work was shown in July 2006 at SOIL Gallery, Seattle.

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