Visual Arts Fellowships

Visual Arts Fellowships

WHAT IS A VISUAL ARTS FELLOWSHIP?

Visual Arts Fellowships are awards of merit, based on the artist’s portfolio, honoring the work of Wyoming visual artists whose work reflects serious and exceptional aesthetic investigation. Artists working in any media, including film and video, may apply. Applications are juried by noted artists, curators, and others in the visual arts from outside the state. Up to three fellowships may be given each year, and jurors may also select honorable mentions.

Recipients of the Visual Arts fellowships exhibit their work in the Wyoming Arts Council Biennial Exhibit, held every two years at a major visual arts institution or museum in the state. The exhibition is curated by one of the jurors, who serves on the panel for two years.

 

2019 Visual Arts Fellowship Recipients

Joe Arnold has always done art as long as he can remember, but it was in Paris in 1961, at the age of 7, when he remembers consciously thinking of himself as an artist and thinking of it as a career. He had seen artists setting up temporary stalls along the Seine to sell their work, so he decided to set up his own show on a table in the lobby of the hotel he was staying at in Paris. He sold his first picture, a Paris scene done with markers, for about 50 cents. During a visit to the Louvre, Joe stood before the huge painting by Delacroix, “Death of Sardanapalus” and it impressed on his young mind how grand and epic and soul-stirring art could really be. He’s aspired to that sort of ideal ever since, now 57 years later, through a life of being known as “that artist guy” in school, a BFA in painting at the Philadelphia College of Art, and an unbroken art career since then.

Joe’s goal as a landscape painter is still to produce things that are epic and soul stirring. And he has sought that through the views from the summits of mountains looking down. This vast and epic sort of view has earned him the moniker of the “Plein-air Artist of Thin Air,” also the name of a short documentary of him painting on location.

Elaine Olafson Henry is a ceramics artist, curator, writer and local volunteer. She is the former Editor and Publisher of the international ceramics journals, “Ceramics: Art & Perception” and “Ceramics TECHNICAL.” She earned a BFA from the University of Wyoming and an MFA from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale and is now pursuing an MA in English at the University of Wyoming. She taught at Emporia State University in Kansas from 1996–2007 where she served as the Chair of the Department of Art from 2000–2007. Elaine served as the President of the International Ceramics Magazine Editors Association (ICMEA) 2014–2016 and the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) 2002–2004. She is currently a Fellow of that organization. Her work is internationally published, exhibited and collected. She is an elected member of the International Academy of Ceramics.

Andy Kincaid (b. Minneapolis, 1986) is an artist and curator who lives and works in Jackson Hole where he started the gallery Holiday Forever, and is part of the curatorial group Peradam Capital. He recently co-founded the residency program Rondezvous with artist Mark Dunstan. The artist has exhibited at the Nicolaysen Art Museum – Casper, Leroy’s – Los Angeles, MINT – Columbus, OH, The Neon Heater – Findlay, OH, Yeah Marybe – Minneapolis, SiTE:LAB – Grand Rapids, MI, ACRE projects – Chicago, Altered Esthetics – Minneapolis, The Trout Museum of Art – Appleton, WI, The Neville Museum – Green Bay, WI, among others, with an upcoming exhibition at The Gesthouse – Wilson, WY.

Honorable mentions were awarded to Brittney Denham of Sheridan, Sonja Caywood from Dayton, and Wendell Field from Jackson.

Submissions are juried anonymously by jurors from outside the state. The jurors for this year’s Visual Arts Fellowships were Ruth Bruno and Adriane Herman.

Previous Visual Arts Fellowship Recipients

List of Previous Recipients