In 2008, Artist Trust awarded $119,195 in Grants for Artist Projects (GAP) to 80 outstanding Washington State artists. The GAP program provides up to $1,500 to individual artists for various projects. In 2008, Artist Trust received a record 975 applications from artists working in all disciplines across Washington State. In addition, Artist Trust awarded five residencies as part of the Artist Trust Centrum Residency Partnership and one residency as part of the Camano Island Residency. For more information on residency recipients click here.

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

EMERGING & CROSS-DISCIPLINARY ARTS

Elizabeth Buschmann, Seattle, King County, ($1500) for the purchase of conductive fibers/thread, wearable micro controller lillypad arduino and an industrial sewing machine. Her project is an investigation in performative aspects of social interaction, articulated with imbedded wearable technology in theatrical costuming. Using the heartbeat as an improvisational tool within performance, the interlacing of pulse and narrative arch test the architecture between physical bodies and cultural archetypes. Elizabeth is interested in how affected light sources physically intermingle and further articulate their relationships within the narrative structure.

Robert Millis, Seattle, King County, ($1500) for a new video camera. His work varies from gallery installations to documentation of early recordings. Among other projects, Robert will be taking a trip to India to meet with record collectors and musicians and research the possibility of a film on early Indian music. He also has a number of upcoming installations and performances with Climax Golden Twins and other artists.

Yann Novak, Seattle, King County, ($1500) to cover video equipment for new source material. Yann’s work varies greatly, but revolves around a central theme: “conveying the emotional impact of a specific place and time through the adaptation and alteration of recorded material.” With the addition of video equipment, he will begin to expand his body of work to video installations and audio/visual concerts.

Susan Robb, Seattle, King County, ($1500) for the creation of four separate outdoor installations in green spaces throughout the Seattle area such as Marymoor Park, Tolt MacDonald Park, Downtown Bellevue Park, and Alderbrook Park. Her project, titled “Giant Black Toobs,” is a series of large, black, polypropylene bags that, when windy, are inflated with air. When sunlight heats the air, the toobs become buoyant. She was inspired to create "Giant Black Toobs" by “the swirling miasma of consumer plastics the size of Texas in the Pacific Ocean” as a symbol of the “American cycle of consumption and waste.”

Michael Simi, Seattle, King County, ($1500) for financial assistance for the completion of his multi-disciplinary sculptural figure installation, Applewood Manor. His most ambitious project to date, Applewood Manor will feature a group of 24 full-sized, clothed figures with a speaker in every head. Each figure will have independent “thoughts and concerns” to be voiced through their speaker. The resulting sound will, at times be a cacophony and, at others, a symphony.

Jessie Smith, Seattle, King County, ($1500) for the completion of her multi-disciplinary installation Left and Leaving. The month-long exhibit will feature dance, film, visual art, and music in collaboration with artists such as Ben Kasulke and Jherek Bischoff. The main element of Left and Leaving is a 20-minute dance cinema short on Super 8 film among the industrial rubble of Berlin. For the opening of the show, Smith will elaborate upon elements seen in Left and Leaving through a live dance performance.

LITERARY ARTS  

Emily Beyer, Seattle, King County, ($1500) so she may pay the cost of living for a month while finishing her first book of poetry entitled Sightseeing. Sightseeing is a book of poems connected by shorter poems. Together, the poems form a line of sight that explores the limits of interactions and intimacy between people as well as the ways imagination can be shaped through these interactions. The longer poems in the book are usually accentual verse and accompanied by a four-line companion poem in Sapphic style.

Jennifer Culkin, Bainbridge Island, Kitsap County ($1500) to cover travel and other costs not covered by her publisher for promoting her full-length collection of personal essays titled Four Souls Abroad. Her essays deal with topics ranging from her lengthy career in critical care nursing to motherhood in middle age.

Mike Daley, Mount Vernon, Skagit County ($1500) for recording, production and distribution of copies of a CD of poetry and music. Titled Frankie The MilkMan’s Song, the narrative poem is based loosely on the life of Mike’s grandfather and other stories told by his relatives.

Bret Fetzer, Seattle, King County ($1300) for the time necessary to complete six “American fairy tales.” Bret has been writing original fairy tales for over 20 years; performing them as a storyteller in venues across the Seattle area. About a year ago, Bret decided to abandon the traditional fairy tale locations of Europe, the Middle East, or China, and concentrate his efforts on creating a fairy tale that is distinctly American. He plans to perform these tales as a story-suite this fall.

Kathleen Flenniken, Seattle, King County ($1500) for the submission of her book of poetry to competitions. Plume is Kathleen’s second book-length poetry collection and is nearly complete. It is a meditation on the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, both historical and personal, and focuses on the human damage wreaked by government secrets. The manuscript is a departure from her first collection, Famous, which explored the domestic life of a woman at midlife.

Ann Gerike, Coupeville, Island County ($1500) for travel to the Gillies Archives at Queen Mary’s Hospital in Sidkup, Kent where maxillo-facial surgery was developed. Ann’s poem’s deal with World War One casualties and the development of facial reconstructive surgery. She will also visit the Royal College of Surgeons in London to view and study 69 pastel drawings of damaged men, and the National Army Museum and Imperial War Museum in addition to the Royal Army Dental Corps in order to gain greater insight to the development of maxillo-facial surgery and its effects on patients’ lives.

Adriana Grant, Seattle, King County ($1500) to cover the costs of travel to Washington State’s Writer’s Retreat. Adriana has recently begun her next poetry manuscript, which focuses on the changeable nature of our northwest weather, in all its moods. Writer’s Retreat is located on Orcas Island and within the cloud shadow of the Olympic Mountains and therefore has particular interesting variability in weather conditions as well as spectacular cloud structures to inspire her manuscript.

Sibyl James, Seattle, King County ($1500) to cover costs of finding a publisher. Her works seeks to combine the personal with conveying the sense of another culture to a U.S. audience, with the goal of expanding Americans’ understanding of the world beyond our borders. As a long-time activist in dealing with the U.S. government’s relations with Latin America, this is reflected through her poetry. Also present is the notion of being a “resident foreigner.”

Brenda Miller, Bellingham, Whatcom County ($1500) for financial support as she completes her fourth book entitled Music of Spheres. This collection of personal essays examines the link between contemplative practices and writing practice. She plans to be an artist in residence at the Whiteley Center on San Juan Island in the fall of 2008.

Doug Nufer, Seattle, King County ($1500) to cover travel expenses for readings in New York for the Issue Project Series, Los Angeles for a book release, and Tuscon for a conceptual poetry conference. As an experimental poet, Doug has found that, in collaboration with other writers, musicians, and/or dancers, he is able to reach a wider audience since meaning is less important than the patterns of language in experimental poetry.

Bill Ransom, Grayland, Grays Harbor ($1500) to fund materials and marketing for the publication of his poetry collection Food Chain. Bill worked as a firefighter and advanced life support EMT through the 80’s and 90’s in Jefferson County and in Central America. He draws upon those experiences in Food Chain as well as to his published chapbook, Last Call.

Amy Schrader, Seattle, King County ($1500) to continue efforts to find a publisher for her manuscript entitled The Situation and What Crosses It. Amy is in the final stages of revision and, for the last year, she has been sending out individual poems as well as the entire manuscript, to literary magazines, contests, and presses for consideration for publication.

Kary Wayson, Seattle, King County ($1500) to cover travel expenses when flying to Rome as a resident of the American Academy in Rome. Kary wishes to see “The Crucifixion of Saint Peter” and “The Conversation of Saint Paul on the Road to Damascus” inside the Church of Santa Maria del Popolo. Both paintings embody moments of extreme personal human crisis and both paintings, which have faced one another head-on across the intimate width of the chapel for over 400 years, and can only be viewed from the side by visitors of the church. Her second manuscript of poetry, titled Maybe So, will deal with the relationship between these two paintings.

MEDIA ARTS

Aaron Bourget, Seattle, King County, ($1500) to produce three self-written short films “Bootlegging The Neighbor” explores privacy, anonymity, and artistic ownership; “Global Warning” is a cautionary tale about climate change and how it relates to film preservation; and “Duchamp Wouldamade” is the film Marcel Duchamp would have made if he had access to video cameras. GAP funds will specifically go towards equipment, transportation, actors’ fees, and DVD duplication.

Ollie Glatzer, Seattle, King County, ($1500) for new studio monitors and a portable sound recorder. Ollie’s new equipment is to be used for sound production in Sean Pecknold’s short film titled “The Strange Hunger” scheduled to appear in the 2008 Seattle International Film Festival.

John Helde, Seattle, King County, ($1500) to adapt his feature documentary film “Made in China” for TV. "Made in China" follows John’s search to understand his father’s childhood as a white American kid growing up in pre-Mao China. It looks at the experience of growing up between two cultures and the meaning of “home.”

Davis Limbach, Seattle, King County, ($1500) to complete a short hand-drawn animated film, which may be seen as a sequel to his short “lifeforms” in which the observer views various organisms interacting and in solitude. Captured and edited digitally, the film will be submitted to various film festivals and screened at small venues across the Northwest and accompanied by live music. Through the film, Davis hopes to animate more complex forms and movements as he improves as an animator.

Matt Wilkins, Tukwila, King County, ($1500) to defray shooting costs for “Yonder,” a feature-length drama about a woman who fears her son is a bad seed. “It begins with sounds of a mysterious animal trapped in the wall of Frances’ house. She investigates and is particularly disturbed by the noises, which trigger memories of her father’s last words. In flashbacks, her dad, Robert, tells her that animals snuck through the walls of the hospital, and came to fetch him away. In a semi-delusional state, he claims to have a secret...”

PERFORMING ARTS

Sallah Ali, Seattle, King County, ($1500) to defray production costs for “Hybrid,” a CD which will fuse musical genres such as jazz and classical with Ali’s World/Arabic sound. Each track on the CD will start out as a standard piece from a different genre and then transition to Ali’s style, reflecting the unique way he hears various forms and disciplines of music. He also hopes to positively and creatively represent his Arabic heritage in contrast to the negative stereotype of Arabs as being “Muslim Extremists” or “Terrorists.” This project will demonstrate how a group of multi-disciplinary musicians can successfully collaborate while reflecting their primary genres. 

Codjo Etienne Cakpo-Gbokou, Seattle, King County, ($1500) to develop and present a performance of African dance, featuring all original, new choreography. Cakpo-Gbokou will serve as principal choreographer and lead dancer in collaboration with three local modern dancers and one international dancer. This new work, while culturally-influenced, will focus solely on modern dance forms. The show will be performed with live and recorded music. “The goals of the project are to offer Western Washington public exposure to an African-inspired modern dance performance with artistic excellence, and to simultaneously showcase the exquisite grace, strength, and richness of culturally-influenced modern dance.”

Ruth Dornfeld, Seattle, King County, ($1500) to cover costs relating to a custom made vielle and support the composition of new works for this instrument. The vielle is an early ancestor of the violin, actively used in medieval times and said to have traveled to Europe from Arabia. Though none of these instruments have survived, Dornfeld is having one made by Stefan Puchalski, an instrument maker in Port Townsend. Reconstruction is possible only from studying medieval woodprints and sculptures of the vielle. Dornfeld will compose 10 to 15 pieces for the vielle inspired by the scales and forms of medieval and traditional French and Turkish music. These pieces would then be performed and recorded for distribution.

Chad Goller-Sojourner, Seattle, King County, ($1500) to help promote, create and document a ninety-minute multi-media show entitled “Sitting in Circles with Rich White Girls: Memoirs of a Bulimic Black Boy.” Goller-Sojourner will explore the process and pattern of identity construction, “in this case how growing up fat, dark-skinned, gay, and adopted by white folks affected and shaped [his] maturation.” This show made its debut June 20, 2008 at the Rainier Valley Cultural Center in Seattle with a run of six shows.

Wayne Horvitz, Seattle, King County, ($1500) to defray the costs of editing and recording parts of “These Hills of Glory,” a piece Horvitz composed in 2006 for a string quartet and improvising soloist. The initial composition and performances of the piece were made possible with assistance from the Mayor’s Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs and 4Culture. The work was performed by the Seattle-based odeonquartet along with soloists Eric Barber, Gust Burns, Eyvind Kang, Bill Frisell, Peggy Lee, Ron Miles and Tom Swafford. Horvitz had “These Hills of Glory” recorded in 2007 by odeonquartet, and he is now working on editing the recording as well as recording soloists Bill Frisell, guitar, and Peggy Lee, cello.

Paul Kikuchi, Seattle, King County, ($1500) to support the design and construction of a new series of percussion instruments: a series of four bass tone bars, tuned microtonally using just intonation, constructed with aluminum and wood keys, PVC resonators, and wood frames. Along with building these instruments Kikuchi will compose original work and record an album at Jack Straw Studios in Seattle. The album will feature these new instruments as well as prepared piano and electronics.

Keri McCarthy, Pullman, Whitman County, ($1500) to commission and perform new works for oboe and piano by Southeast Asian composers. McCarthy has established herself as a leading oboe soloist and promoter of new music. She recently taught at Mahidol University in Bangkok, Thailand, and has studied the music of Asian cultures. Four internationally-recognized composers will be featured in this new recital program: Dr. Weerachat Premananda (Thailand); Nguyen Phuc Linh (Vietnam); Yii Kah Hoh (Malaysia); and Tony Prabowo (Indonesia). Completed works resulting from this project will be performed in a series of concerts across Washington State and Southeast Asia.

Haruko Nishimura, Seattle, King County, ($1500) to create a dance film that captures Nishimura’s butoh-inspired movement and physical theater in a fully realized video production. The theme of this work will be “the blending of nature with artifice.” Her vision includes “meticulous woven forests and landscapes made from the lease expected materials with my strange world of characters... a banana slug princess who’s slime is crochet. Her dress becomes a caterpillar cocoon made of sparkling spider web-like threads.” Nishimura will collaborate with Ian Lucero, a video artist, and Mandy Greer, a whimsical textile artist. Intricate sets, music and animation will bring a new aspect to Nishimura’s movement.

Zoe Scofield, Seattle, King County, ($1500) to support a residency at Centrum Arts Center with Juniper Shuey, video/installation artist, and three dancers from Scofield’s company. This seven-day residency will take place in the Fall of 2008. It will focus on Scofield’s new piece “A crack in everything.” Scofield will take the time and space provided by this residency to explore, challenge and create choreography in response to Juniper Shuey’s set. The set will use three evenly spaced layers of semi-transparent silk hung taut from the ceiling. Projected light and video on the silk will manipulate what can and can’t be seen in the performance space. These elements will be used to shape, inform and create the movements of this piece.

William Smith, Seattle, King County, ($1500) to support the completion of “Space in the Heart,” a jazz opera. This piece takes inspiration from the improvisation of continuos performers during the Baroque period as well as the improvisational style of jazz today. Smith draws on classical models “to create a new kind of opera that involves jazz improvisation structured in a way that continues and expands the traditions of Western drama initiated by the ancient Greeks.” Smith is currently writing the piece with a libretto by Peter Monaghan. It will be recorded with three singers and three instrumentalists.

Nick Stokes, Tacoma, Pierce County, ($1500) to support the development, editing and promotion of the full-length play “Within, Without a Skull.” This play will take the form of five related one-acts, each in a different style. It will explore ”consciousness, identity and the question of self in relationship to mind, body and spirit, or alternatively, thought, biology, and soul.” The play takes place inside a person’s head, resolving in the fifth act when all the actors in the first four acts will appear as multiple aspects of an individual’s existence. Nick is also the recipient of the Camano Island Residency.

Christina Valdes, Seattle, King County, ($1500) to defray the costs of producing a full-length CD of contemporary Latin American classical music for solo piano. Costs include the rental of a Steinway C grand piano and the duplication of 1000 CDs. Valdes is a classically-trained pianist of Cuban descent. She chose pieces by composers who have worked beyond the dominant Latin American genres of traditional folk music and the European classical tradition; this includes avant-garde atonality and post-minimalism. Valdes will be recording this album at Jack Straw Productions in Seattle where she is currently a resident artist.

Allison Van Dyck, Seattle, King County, ($1500) to support the production of “The Snow Project,” a performance integrating dance, sound, video and light effects abstractly based on the scientific nature of snow. It will take place on an interactive stage at the Lawrimore Project, a gallery in downtown Seattle. Performers will interact with the set in different ways during the performance: contact mics will pick up dancer’s impacts, LED balls will rain through the air and the paper floor will be ripped up to reveal reflective mylar that scatters flickers of light throughout the gallery. Van Dyck will artistically direct the entire process of realizing this show, including choreography, lights, costumes and set design.

Gregory Youtz, Tacoma, Pierce County, ($1500) to defray the costs of creating a professional recording of “Fragments: Three Songs of Hope. “ This includes hiring a soprano, oboist, pianist and professional recording engineer. “Fragments” is part of a nine-movement oratorio scored for four vocal soloists, mixed choir and orchestra called “Drum Taps: Nine Poems on Themes of War.” The professional recording of “Fragments” will be used as promotional material to market “Drum Taps,” which has not yet been premiered.

Jennifer Zeyl, Seattle, King County, ($1500) to help create “Project X,” an interactive museum installation. Audience members will explore the museum, create their own time-capsules, review capsules left by previous visitors, listen to testimonials and interact with the Project X database. Small groups will be led by audio guides and maps to unique self-contained performance environments within the larger campus of the event. At the end of the journey, the audience members return to wander the museum exhibits after reflecting on the question, “how do we leave our immortal mark on the future?”

VISUAL ARTS

Renee Adams, Thorp, Kittitas County ($1500) to create new work for upcoming exhibitions at Swarm Gallery in Oakland, Punch Gallery in Seattle, and the Kirkland Arts Center. Over the past several years, Renee has been developing a series of biologically inspired, mixed-media sculptures. The sculptures, often-depicting plant/animal hybrids, draw inspiration from German biologist Ernst Haeckel. “These works question society’s ideals of beauty while considering our manipulation of nature and ourselves for personal pleasure or gain.”

Rick Araluce, Seattle, King County ($1500) to document his downtown installations in downtown Seattle during the summer of 2008. The installations will not disturb or damage their respective sites. They will be simple, miniature objects found in daily life, such as a piece of furniture. However they will be placed, nearly hidden, across downtown as a surprise for those who find them. This new endeavor embodies two current interests by blending miniatures with a full scale installation.

Nola Avienne, Seattle, King County ($1500) for preventative maintenance on her basement studio to ensure the safety of her equipment. Also, for the purchase of replacement tools and equipment lost in the destruction of her studio due to the backup of her sewer system. Nola's works we be shown in a sculpture show at SOIL in September which she is curating and she will have a solo show at the Catherine Person Gallery in February 2009.

Howard Barlow, Thorp, Kittitas County ($1500) for the purchase of a welding and soldering mobile fume and dust extractor. Howard welds steel and, more recently, has been leading glass, using solder from melted down spent bullets. Consequently he has been concerned about the air quality of his studio and adjacent home.

Gala Bent Seattle, King County ($1500) for materials to execute a new body of work. Angela was recently selected for a solo show at 4Culture in Seattle. Like her recent works, the series will be graphite and gouache on watercolor paper. She draws inspiration from environmentalist-poet Wendell Berry’s visual mediation of natural forms.

Maya Chachava Ellensburg, Kittitas County ($1500) for the completion of 15 large-scale paintings. Maya will explore the notion of self-identity and address the issue of origins. With her new works, Maya hopes to enter the grander discourse of identity formation in modern societies. Her work will be on display at Square Inch Gallery in New York from August to September 2008 and TMS Gallery in Tbilisi, Georgia from September to November 2008.

Nancy Megan Corwin, Seattle, King County ($1500) to pay for photography and illustration for a book on traditional and non-traditional chasing and repousse techniques in jewelry and art metals. She has been working with both chasing and repousse techniques for over 30 years and travels the country teaching classes in colleges and art schools. Nancy has been invited to a leading jewelry and metal gallery in New York for an exhibition concurrent with the publication of her book.

Tom DeGroot, Seattle, King County ($1500) for prescription safety goggles and a supplied air respirator. Using a special compressor, it delivers outside ambient air via a hose to a hood worn by the worker. Tom has worked with polyester resin for the past four years and, in order to continue his work with the medium had to obtain a breathing apparatus so he would not develop sensitivity to the resin fumes.

Rachel Dory, Seattle, King County ($1500) for materials related to her newest project “Washington, 48º North.” The project will require Rachel to take a handheld GPS unit and travel to locations precisely along latitude 48º across Washington State, taking pictures on the way. Then pictures will be transformed into a series of 12 to 16 paintings, which will be completed by November 2008. “Washington, 48º North” will be a test for a larger body of work concerning space and time for a trip to Africa in Winter 2008/2009.

Eric Eley, Seattle, King County ($1500) towards the purchase of materials and equipment for an installation to be shown in an upcoming exhibition in Germany. By using simple materials and an analytical language of lines, points, and planes Eric builds complex and expansive structured landscapes that push the boundaries of the space they inhabit.

Eric Elliott, Seattle, King County ($1500) to help offset the cost of materials, time and studio space required for creating a new series of paintings and drawings. In his current work, Eric has been using the still life as a point of departure; the objects in the still life come together to make a larger form. He will work within these larger forms, blurring edges as if the objects are being carved out of a slab of rock. Eric is in an upcoming show at SOIL Gallery.

Diana Falchuk, Seattle, King County ($1500) to create a series of photographed sculptural set-ups that involve decayed, sun-dried food. Diana scars and discolors the food, leaving it in sunny windows to shrivel and harden. Her most recent work depicts multiple degraded parts of small beings bound together with vital material. She uses her work to convey an optimistic conclusion for the threat of decay and extinction facing our physical world.

John Feodorov, Seattle, King County ($1500) for the development of a limited edition self-published booklet based upon a series of recent prints titled “Collectibles.” “Collectibles” is an exploration upon John’s experience as a Native American white male living within a dominant urban culture. Old photographs of family members combined with quotes from advertisements denoting a stereotypical Native American in order to expose the construction of a Native American identity and its impact on an individual of mixed race.

Mandy Greer, Seattle, King County ($1500) for the completion of an installation at the Bellevue Art Museum. In her installation, titled Dare alla Luce, the viewer passes through and under a forest canopy of earthly paradise of eight green chandelier-like forms made of 1000+ yards of crocheted/beaded/braided/stitched vines, branches, and leaves. Mandy’s inspiration for this current body of work comes from Jacopo Tintoretto’s painting The Origin of the Milky Way.

Gail Grinnell, Seattle, King County ($1050) for round-trip airfare from Seattle to Ballycastle, Ireland in County Mayo. She was accepted for a residency in February to March 2008 as a fellow of the Balliglen Foundation. She primarily uses symbols and materials from daily life such as thread and cloth or bones and veins. To live in another culture and physical environment allows her to experience her own working process in a different context.

Lisa Hasegawa, Seattle, King County ($1500) to offset the cost of a letterpress class at Penland School of Crafts. Penland teaches non-traditional methods that push the medium of letterpress far beyond its original intent. Lisa teaches at the Pratt Fine Arts Center. Her work varies between autobiographical narratives to images of child-like wonder. Inspiration comes from her collections of antique toys, vintage ephemera and life-changing events. By combining humor and a simplistic style, Lisa offers the viewer a little happiness and laughter through her work.

Harrison Higgs, Vancouver, Clark County ($1500) to cover costs of mounting/laminating expenses and final exhibition-scale prints to be displayed in 2008. The focus of the prints is to be interior and exterior representations of the body. Harrison’s work is a series of photographic-based images using a digital camera and scanner for input and a wide-format inkjet printer to output the prints. He uses macro photography to capture small constructions of gelatin and plastic forms. The gelatin structures obscure, distort, and collude with images on LCD monitors, yielding complex biomorphic forms.

Sarah Hood, Seattle, King County ($1465) for purchase of two pieces of equipment to document her work: a Canon XTi digital SLR camera and a diffusion tent/light set-up. Sarah creates jewelry within the intersection of archetypal forms and the natural world and is inspired by organic materials. She sells through her web site and various web-based vendor sites. GAP funds will aid in making a valuable first impression with potential exhibitions and customers alike.

Alan Hurley, Seattle, King County ($1500) for the time in which to finish a new series of paintings. His new works will be a translation of his inner life onto the picture plane. As his own model, Alan hopes to impart a personal form of visual storytelling. GAP funds will make it possible for Alan to spend less time on commercial projects and focus solely on the development of his new work.

Etsuko Ichikawa, Seattle, King County ($1500) to cover the cost of supplemental materials for the upcoming exhibit Traces of the Molten State scheduled to run at the Bellevue Arts Museum October 8, 2008 through March 8, 2009. Traces of the Molten State is built around the concept of material evidence. Her most recent body of work may be described as “glass pyrograph” in which molten glass is used to draw on paper. It is one way to eternalize a fleeting moment while leaving evidence of the material origin and imprinting a process of its transformation in the work.

Derrick Jefferies, Seattle, King County ($1500) for a small light box to shoot on in addition to a large light box to display prints. Derrick’s work “champions the ubiquitous object or material and how it can surprise, befuddle, or transcend its everyday connotation.” He mostly shoots semi-transparent objects with the aid of a light box and, after digitally combining photographs together, creates organic scenarios that imply movement or biological imperatives.

Amy Johnson, Seattle, King County ($1500) for materials to be used during her artist in residence at Centrum in Port Townsend. Her work deals with the fairy-tale narrative’s impact on female identity formation. Her intent as an artist is to create empathy and to voice concern for what is repeatedly engrained in the minds of girls, of women. Amy’s medium is primarily paper. She creates three-dimensional wall installations as well as sculptures, which she combines into site-specific installations.

Yoshihiro Kitai, Vancouver, Clark County ($1500) for a printing press that may accommodate large-format prints. In making prints, Yoshiro draws from his experience of moving to the United States from Japan and having no facility in the language. He describes his work as “a series of obsessive marks directly on paper.” Yoshiro will make a series of 22” x 30” multi-layered monotype prints with his press, which will be modeled after the design of the Ray Trayle etching press.

Amanda Knowles, Shoreline, King County ($1500) to defray costs associated with creating a new body of work that journey into the sculptural realm. As opposed to previous installations, imagery will be cut into steel by a local metal fabricator, allowing the creation of larger and more detailed pieces. The larger installation will consider and explore a new type of interaction with the ground they hang over, investigating painted/stenciled backgrounds.

Jane Lackey, Seattle, King County ($1500) for the purchase of paper, paint and a high quality digital camera for the creation of her latest project “Map Folds.” “Map Folds” will develop sequenced drawings into forms given definition and nuance through folding, a natural correlation to map reading. Sections of the drawings will remain hidden until they are opened and intimate areas of connection can become tactile points of unfolding, rearrangement, or surprise.

Molly Landreth, Seattle, King County ($1500) to help cover the cost of framing. In her latest project “Embodiment,” Molly couples life-size color portraits with handwritten statements from her subjects. She wishes to take the viewer on a journey through a rapidly-changing community and the lives of people who offer brave new visions of what it means to be queer in America today. “Embodiment” will be on display at Legion Arts in Cedar Rapids Iowa and, with help from the Warhol Initiative, she will be an artist-in-residence.

Margie Livingston, Seattle, King County ($1500) to purchase theatre lighting for her studio. Margie builds structures in her studio and lights them with both warm and cool light in order to consider the intermingling of light, color, and form as they move through space. The combination of warm and cool light creates what she calls a “visual vibration,” which she captures in paint. The resulting work exists between abstraction and representation and new lighting will assist her in expanding her evolving body of work.

Matthew Mitros, Seattle, King County ($1500) for the purchase of materials related to his exhibition at Gallery 4Culture. Matthew plans to create to use the space at Gallery 4Culture to present a body of work that will focus on the disorienting effects of presenting a drippy object in a position that either completely contradicts gravity & weight, or highlights it. He will preserve drips using urethane resin that cures in 90 seconds. In addition to the dripping object, Matthew plans to construct a false floor located on the ceiling of the gallery as well as objects will altered axis points in order to disorient the viewer.

Eric Olson, Seattle, King County ($1500) to help defray costs and welder’s fees for paintings to be installed in Harborview Medical Center. Eric will create two large-scale paintings that consist of three panels each. The panels are constructed of aluminum sheet mounted to aluminum frames. The works will be a continuation of Eric’s dot paintings on aluminum and deal with themes of maintaining a sense of structure in ever-changing environments with constant random influences.

Natalie Oswald, Seattle, King County ($1500) for supplies necessary for continuation of her current painting series. Natalie seeks to explore nature and the decorative arts through painting. In Curiosities, birds, beasts, flora and other “curious objects” are juxtaposed with the somewhat formal aspects of decorative art. In her work, Natalie has expanded her use of materials to include faux finishing techniques and hand-carved printmaking blocks. The funds will also be used to market Curiosities for upcoming shows in the summer and fall of 2008.

Tammie Rubin, Seattle, King County ($1500) to create a new body of sculptures made with colored porcelain. Her previous work has been the creation of fanciful creatures that appear both familiar and alien. Tammie is inspired by manufactured objects, which are often labeled as disposable or trivial. In her new work, Tammie hopes to incorporate the translucency of stained porcelain in order to better express her message of the changing historical views of ornament and pattern in contemporary culture.

Ariana Russell, Seattle, King County ($1500) for materials related to her November show at Gallery 4Culture. Since her collaboration entitled Leather and Lace at SOIL with Allison Manch, Ariana has been exploring the potential of temporary tattoos as clothing. In her latest exhibition, she has cut out photographs of her skin into designs adapted from clothing and wallpaper, and transformed them into temporary tattoos that will be in turn attached to her body in her own line of “skin wear.”

Holly Senn, Tacoma, Pierce County ($1500) for the purchase of an iMac and Photoshop. Holly uses discarded library books to make sculptures and installations in which she explores the life cycle of ideas- the organic, non-linear process in which thoughts have a genesis and then are disseminated, adopted or refuted, forgotten or referenced. As an academic librarian in an age where most people prefer digital resources, she reflects upon each new generation’s collective erasure of some element of the past and its casting of new ideas into the future. 

Rebecca Dvorin Strong, Vashon, King County ($1500) towards the framing of 12 gouache paintings on paper using archival mats and anti-reflective museum glass. Rebecca’s symbolic tree self-portraits are a departure from her previous work. For the gouache studies, she uses white paint exclusively on black paper and, instead of using black and white paint in order to create gray tones, tonal contrast is created by how much black paper shows through the diluted white paint. Her gouache as well as oil paintings were on display at the Blue Heron Gallery on Vashon Island in June 2008.

Timea Tihanyi, Seattle, King County ($1500) to defer the costs of shipping and installation at the Chicago International Museum of Surgical Science in May 2008. The exhibition entitled “Two New Space, One Old Body” ran from May through July. Timea will be exhibiting several old works from 2007 in addition to new work using the process of angiography: a medical imaging technique used to visualize blood vessels and the heart. Having been trained in medicine, her art-making process is a tightrope walk between analytical, scientific objectivity and subjective, visceral experience.

Jennifer Towner, Seattle, King County ($1500) for the framing of twelve prints from an upcoming show in Chicago. The exhibition was the result of a documentary television series called “Artstar” in which six graduates from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago were followed as they made their transition from graduate school to the real world. Jennifer’s project, “I Heart Ann,” stemmed from her love of “The Today Show” and features numerous prints that capture her in the background of "The Today Show" holding a sign that incorporated Ann Curry's name. Her project, along with the five other graduates was on display at the Scope Art Fair in Miami.

Sylwia Tur, Seattle, King County ($1500) to purchase a shovel and GPS tracking system. Sylwia is interested in the idea of excess in the artistic world in that many pieces of art that one makes will never be sold or shown. Since she works primarily in clay, it seems appropriate to bury several old pieces of work around the greater Seattle area. She will mark their locations with a GPS device and display them on a web site.

Laura Ward, Seattle, King County ($1500) for the development of three new sculptures for display in an upcoming solo exhibition at Gallery 4Culture in October of 2008. Abandoned houses inspired her last series of work. By juxtaposing historical elements and imagery, Laura hopes to induce a feeling of nostalgia. With her new sculptures, she hopes to continue to explore the evocation of nostalgic feeling and the line, which divides real and imagined memories.

Frederic Wong, Lynnwood, Snohomish County ($1380) for the continued production of work. Frederic calls his work “Non-Action Painting” because it is related to the Taoist concept of non-action. He pours tea or pigment on glazed tiles to stain on its own or cracks tiles and then reassembles its pieces. The process is very time-consuming and changes in stain are almost imperceptible, but a time-lapse video may be employed in order to illuminate his process.

Ellen Ziegler, Seattle, King County ($1500) for outside fabrication of three-dimensional drawings by photochemical etching. For the past three years, Ellen has been drawing from “life” -- images of viruses, microorganisms, undersea flora and fauna, imagined life forms- using an electrically charged pen on a copper table. In her new work, Ellen wishes to cast more precise shadows both with gallery lights and theatre spotlights. In order to do so, she will photo chemically etch her paper drawings onto metal sheets.

Sara Zin, Everett, Snohomish County ($1500) to hire models for her latest series of paintings. Sarah is a figurative painter that specializes in the human form. Her current series of paintings may be seen as self-portraits, but her aim is to illustrate the process of thought and contemplation in an attempt to connect the viewer of the painting and provoke the viewer’s own internal questioning. She now seeks to paint models of different race and disposition to allow for a more diverse connection between painting and viewer.