Columbus, Ohio – The Greater Columbus Arts Council (GCAC) and theColumbus Museum of Art (CMA) are pleased to announce the recipients 2012 Visual Arts Fellowship awards.
The following 2012 Visual Arts Fellowship recipients were chosen from 110 applicants: Laura Alexander (3D), Matthew Flegle (3D), Andrea Myers (3D), and Anna Laurie Mackay (2D). 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 summer of 2013. The CMA exhibition will also feature the artists selected for the Dresden Exchange program.
The 2012 Visual Arts Fellowship recipient bios:
Laura Alexander
Alexander builds precise layers of paper in a very labor intensive manner to manipulate shadows, creating playful pieces of work on an all white palette. Alexander graduated with a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art and received her MFA from the University of Washingon, Seattle. She works out of Junctionview Studios and is an active member of the local arts community. She recently exhibited at the Grand Rapids Art Museum for ArtPrize where she placed 7th.
Matthew Flegle
Flegle earned a BFA from The Ohio State University in 1995 and an MFA from Stanford University in 2003. He was awarded a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in 2001 and has exhibited work in New York and San Francisco. Most recently he has been included in shows at The Decorative Arts Center of Ohio in Lancaster and The Weston Gallery, Aronoff Center for the Arts in Cincinnati, Ohio. Flegle is currently a faculty member of Columbus College of Art and Design.
Anna Laurie Mackay
Mackay grew up in Salt Lake City, Utah, where she lived until moving to Columbus five years ago. She studied printmaking at both Brigham Young University, where she received her BFA and at The Ohio State University where she received her MFA in 2009. She currently works from home as a full time mom and an artist.
Andrea Myers
Myers explores the space between two and three dimensionality by combining forms of painting, sculpture and textile based work. Originally from Westerville, Ohio, Myers received her MFA from the Fiber and Material Studies department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2006. In 2011, Myers was the only artist from Ohio to receive the Efroymson Contemporary Arts Fellowship, a prestigious award given to five Midwestern artists annually. She has also received grant awards from the City of Chicago and the Union League Club of Chicago. She currently teaches in the Foundations and Fine Arts areas at the Columbus College of Art and Design.
GCAC’s Arts Fellowships program, established in 1986, recognizes outstanding Franklin County artists. Since the inception of the program, more than 140 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 2012 Visual Artist Fellowship awards:
3D: Keith Simpson, Susan O’Connor, Juliellen Byrne
Photography: Jenny Fine, Andrew Spear
2D: Mariana A. Smith
Craft: Michael B. Hays
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 2012 recipients and finalists will be invited to apply for GCAC’s Dresden Artists Exchange. Artists who have participated previously in any GCAC exchange program are not eligible to apply.
Members of the 2012 Visual Arts Fellowship panel who reviewed all applications and recommended fellowships were Janine Cirincione, director of Sean Kelly Gallery (New York); David Hartz, associate professor of Electronic Media Communications, University of Cincinnati, Blue Ash College and Karen Kunc, Cather professor of art, University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
This year, one of the four fellowships will be 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. Anna Laurie Mackay Allred received the Annie’s Fund award.
A reception in honor of the 2012 Visual Arts Fellowship recipients will be held in conjunction with the exhibition hosted by the Columbus Museum of Art in the spring of 2013.
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, Franklin County, 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 Greater Columbus Arts Council, Nationwide Foundation, Ohio Arts Council, and the Charlotte R. Haller, Lewis K. Osborne, and Robert B. Hurst funds of The Columbus Foundation 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 Friday from 11:00 AM to 2:00 PM and 11:00 AM – 4:00 PM Saturday and Sunday. For additional information, call 614.221.4848 or visitwww.columbusmuseum.org.
# # #
CONTACT: Jami Goldstein
(614) 221-8492
jgoldstein@gcac.org
