Columbus, Ohio – The Greater Columbus Arts Council (GCAC) and the Columbus Museum of Art (CMA) are pleased to announce the recipients of the 2013 Visual Arts Fellowship awards.
The 2013 Visual Arts Fellowship recipients, chosen from 198 applicants, are: Evan Dawson (3-D), Shane Mecklenburger (3-D), Clara L. Crockett (2-D), and Shannon Benine (Photography). Awards were based on the artistic merit of works submitted in the disciplines of Craft, 2- and 3-D Visual Arts and Photography. Each Fellowship recipient will receive $5,000 and be featured in an exhibition hosted by the Columbus Museum of Art in the spring of 2014.
The 2013 Visual Arts Fellowship recipient bios:
Evan Dawson
Evan Dawson teaches sculpture at The Ohio State University. He is the grandson of immigrant Holocaust survivors, and the child of global missionary parents. In his work all relationships are at stake: religion, heritage, narration of history, economic development, circulation of the material world, our posture towards the environment, and bare survival. His work has been exhibited in group exhibitions at the Sculpture Center in Cleveland, OSU Urban Arts Space in Columbus, Semantics Gallery in Cincinnati and the New York Center for Arts and Media Studies. He received his MFA from OSU in 2012.
Shane Mecklenburger
Shane Mecklenburger is an intermedia artist whose projects collaborate with systems of value, simulation and science. His work has been exhibited at the Hoxton Art Gallery in London, The El Paso Museum of Art, The Dallas Museum of Art, The Studio for Electro- Instrumental Music in Amsterdam, and in Chicago the New Capital Gallery and the Antena Gallery . He received an MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2009 and is Assistant Professor of Art at The Ohio State University.
Clara L. Crockett
Clara Crockett is a performance and visual artist in Columbus. She has received multiple Individual Artist Fellowships from the Ohio Arts Council, Greater Columbus Arts Council and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 1990. She has participated in residency fellowships at the VermontStudioCenter and the Yellow Springs Institute for Contemporary Studies and the Arts 1988. Her work has been presented at Ohio Arts Council’s The Riffe Gallery in Columbus, WexnerCenter for the Arts Spaces, Cleveland, Pittsburg Center for the Arts, Cleveland Center of Contemporary Art, among many others.
Shannon Benine
Shannon Benine is an internationally exhibited, interdisciplinary artist working in photography, video and installation art. Benine’s work has been widely exhibited and included in the collections of the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago and the National Centre of Contemporary Art in Moscow, Russia. Benine works as an Assistant Professor of Photography & Multi Media at ColumbusCollege of Art & Design. She received her MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago and her BFA in Photography and BA in Interdisciplinary Visual Arts from the University of Washington in Seattle.
GCAC’s Arts Fellowships program, established in 1986, recognizes outstanding FranklinCounty artists. Since the inception of the program, more than 150 artists have received awards in a variety of disciplines, including visual arts, crafts, film and video, creative writing, music composition and choreography/movement arts. GCAC’s program is one of the few local fellowship programs in the country.
GCAC would also like to congratulate the finalists for the 2013 Visual Artist Fellowship awards:
3D: Tyler Bohm; Ken Rinaldo
2D: Shawn Mcbride; Alan B. Crockett; Morris Jackson; Mark Bush; Kaveri Raina; Becca Lynn
Photography: Jenny Fine; Jessica Phelps; Mike Olenick; Tariq Mohamed; Elizabeth Fergus-Jean
Crafts: Joanna Manousis; Mikelle Hickman-Romine; Michael B. Hays; Lisa Belsky
The awards, recommended in an anonymous review process by panelists, assist recipients in any manner they choose to support the creation of new works and/or the advancement of their careers. All 2013 recipients and finalists will be invited to apply for GCAC’s Artist Exchange program in Dresden, Germany. Artists who have participated previously in any GCAC exchange program are not eligible to apply.
Members of the 2013 Visual Arts Fellowship panel who reviewed all applications and recommended fellowships were Gregory Burke, Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer of the Mendel Art Gallery, Saskatoon, Canada and the future Remai Art Gallery of Saskatchewan; Mercedes Vicente, Darcy Lange Curator-at-Large and formerly Curator of Contemporary Art at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery in New Zealand (2005-2012); and Jennifer Yum, Vice President, Head of Sale, Post-War and Contemporary Art at Christie’s auction house.
This year, one of the four fellowships is made possible through the generosity of Annie’s Fund, a foundation created in honor of surgeon, artist and arts patron Anne Miller. Until her untimely death in 1998, Miller was an established member of the medical community and a dedicated artist specializing in the hand-crafted arts—those created by people with little or no formal training and without regard to the mainstream art world’s recognition or marketplace. This special award celebrates Miller’s commitment to this art form’s visionary quality and the recipient’s work is meant to embody this bold concept. Shannon Benine received the Annie’s Fund award.
A reception in honor of the 2013 Visual Arts Fellowship recipients will be held in conjunction with the exhibition hosted by the Columbus Museum of Art in the spring of 2014.
For more information contact Ruby Harper, Grants & Services Director at rharper@gcac.org.
About the Greater Columbus Arts Council: Through vision and leadership, advocacy and collaboration, the Greater Columbus Arts Council supports art and advances the culture of the region. A catalyst for excellence and innovation, we fund exemplary artists and arts organizations and provide programs, events and services of public value that educate and engage all audiences in our community. GCAC thanks the City of Columbus, FranklinCounty, the Ohio Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts for their continued support.
About the Columbus Museum of Art: The Columbus Museum of Art creates great experiences with great art for everyone. The Columbus Foundation, the Greater Columbus Arts Council, Nationwide Foundation, and the Ohio Arts Council provide ongoing support. CMA and the Museum Store are open Tuesday through Sunday from 10:00 AM to 5:30 PM, and until 8:30 PM every Thursday. The Palette Express is open Tuesday through Sunday from 10:00 AM to 3:00 PM. For additional information, call (614) 221-4848 or visit www.columbusmuseum.org.
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CONTACT: Jami Goldstein
(614) 221-8492
jgoldstein@gcac.org
