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The Greater Columbus Arts Council, Columbus Museum of Art Announce the 2017 Visual Arts Fellowship Awards

in Press Releases August 2, 2017 5 min read

COLUMBUS, Ohio – The Greater Columbus Arts Council (Arts Council) and the Columbus Museum of Art (CMA) are pleased to announce the recipients of the 2017 Visual Arts Fellowship awards.

The 2017 Visual Arts Fellowship, chosen from 74 applicants, are: Cody Heichel, Dareen Hussein, Luke Stettner and Carmen Winant.

Each Fellowship recipient will receive $5,000 and be featured in an exhibition hosted by the Columbus Museum of Art in 2018.

2017 Visual Arts Fellowship recipient bios:

Cody Heichel is a Columbus-based watercolorist whose work focuses primarily on the urban landscape. He is a signature member of the Ohio Watercolor Society, and has shown work in numerous solo and group exhibitions throughout Ohio. His honors and awards include an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award in 2017, the Ohio Watercolor Society Merit Award and several Artist in the Community Grants through the Greater Columbus Arts Council. In 2016 Heichel was selected to attend the Highlands Nature Sanctuary Artist-in-Residency program, and several of his pieces created during this residency were later exhibited at the Columbus Museum of Art. His work is currently represented by Brandt-Roberts Galleries in Columbus.

Dareen Hussein is a photographer and multimedia artist based in Columbus. Hussein’s practice considers the archive an elastic space used to interrogate history, memory and experiences within the Palestinian diaspora. Hussein received her Bachelor’s of Fine Art in photography and media from the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) in Valencia, California. In 2015, Hussein was awarded the Allan Sekula Social Documentary Fund to assist in the beginning phases of this project.

Luke Stettner has studied at the University of Arizona in Tucson and at the Film & TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. In 2003, he moved to Brooklyn to study at the School of Visual Arts, and in 2013, he moved to Boulder, Colorado to be closer to his partner, Carmen Winant. Winant and Stettner worked together in Madison, Maine at The Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture from 2013-2015, then moved to Columbus, where Winant began working at Columbus College of Art & Design. Stettner has been a visiting professor of photography at Ohio University in Athens since August of 2015.

Carmen Winant lives and works in Columbus. She collects and arranges other people’s pictures of women, structuring contradictory narratives of pleasure and injury, submission and authority. Most recently she has completed installations at the MoCA Cleveland (A World Without Men, 2015), the Columbus Museum of Art (Pictures of Women Working, 2016) and the Wexner Center for the Arts (The Answer is Matriarchy, 2017). In 2016, Winant had solo shows at Fortnight Institute in New York and Skibum McArthur in Los Angeles; she will have a solo show in October at Cave in Detroit. Winant is also a writer and is currently at work on an experimental book about practice. She is an assistant professor at Columbus College of Art & Design.

The Arts Council’s Fellowship program, established in 1986, recognizes outstanding Columbus and Franklin County artists. Since the inception of the program, more than 300 awards have been made in a variety of disciplines.

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 2017 recipients and finalists will be invited to apply for the Arts Council’s Artist Exchange program in Dresden, Germany. Artists who have participated previously in any Arts Council exchange program are not eligible to apply.

The 2017 Visual Arts Fellowships were juried by Rehema C. Barber, director and chief curator of the Tarble Arts Center at Eastern Illinois University; Geof Oppenheimer, associate professor of practice in the arts at the University of Chicago; and Rob Teeters, founder of Front Desk Apparatus, New York.

Carmen Winant’s fellowship is made possible through the generosity of Annie’s Fund, a charitable fund created in honor of Columbus 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 self-taught 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 concept of visionary artists and bold creative concepts.

The Columbus Museum of Art will feature the 2017 Visual Arts Fellowship recipients and Artist Exchange participants in the annual Greater Columbus exhibition. The 2018 exhibition dates are May 18 to Sept. 2, 2018. A reception in honor of the fellowship recipients will be held in conjunction with the exhibition in 2018.

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, the Arts Council funds exemplary artists and arts organizations and provides programs, events and services of public value that educate and engage all audiences in our community. The Arts Council thanks the City of Columbus and the Ohio Arts Council for their continued support. www.gcac.org

About the Columbus Museum of Art: Columbus Museum of Art creates great experiences with great art for everyone. The Greater Columbus Arts Council, Nationwide Foundation, Ohio Arts Council, and the William C. and Naoma W. Denison, Frederic W. and Elizabeth E. Heimberger, Paul-Henri Bourguignon and Erika Bourguignon Fund for Visual Art, and Bette Wallach funds of The Columbus Foundation provide ongoing support. CMA, Schokko Art Café, and the Museum Store are open Tuesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and until 9 p.m. every Thursday. Museum admission is $14 for adults; $8 for seniors and students 6 and older; and free for members, children 5 and younger. Special exhibition fees may also apply. General admission is free for all on Sundays, thanks to PNC Free Sundays presented by PNC Arts Alive, made possible through a grant from the PNC Foundation. CMA charges a flat rate of $5 for parking in the Museum’s East Gay lot. CMA members park for free.For additional information, call 614.221.6801 or visit columbusmuseum.org.

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CONTACT: Jami Goldstein
(614) 221-8492
jgoldstein@gcac.org