Visual Arts Fellowships

The Wyoming Arts Council’s Visual Arts Fellowships were created in 1986 and are based on the artist’s portfolio, honoring the work of Wyoming visual artists whose work reflects serious and exceptional aesthetic investigation.

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About the Visual Arts Fellowship

The Wyoming Arts Council’s Visual Arts Fellowships are $5,000 unrestricted 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.

2024 Visual Arts Fellowship Info

2024 Application Window: April 10 – June 10, 2024

The winners of this year’s fellowship will exhibit in 2025. The exhibition is curated by one of the jurors, who serves on the panel for two years. Applicants must be Wyoming residents. The deadline to apply is June 10, 2024.

Click here for the online application:

Apply for the Visual Arts Fellowship Here

ELIGIBILITY

 

WHAT IF YOU WIN AN AWARD?

 

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

 

Meet the 2024 Jurors

Ginger Shulick Porcella In January 2023 Ginger Shulick Porcella was named as the Executive Director of Creative Growth Art Center, the premier organization for contemporary artists with developmental disabilities. Porcella most recently was the Executive Director and Chief Curator of Franconia Sculpture Park and the founder/co-curator of the 4Ground: Midwest Land Art Biennial. She has led nonprofit arts organizations in New York, California, Minnesota, and Arizona, and has curated critically acclaimed museum exhibitions such as: Amir H. Fallah: Scatter my Ashes on Foreign Lands; Blessed Be: Mysticism, Spirituality and the Occult in Contemporary Art; and Dazzled: OMD, Memphis Design and Beyond. Her exhibitions have been positively reviewed in Frieze, The New York Times, and Hyperallergic and in 2015 she was named the “Voice of the Year” by the San Diego press for her visionary leadership in transforming the arts and cultural ecosystem of Southern California and Baja, Mexico.

 

Libby Garon has worked as the Gallery Director at Walker Fine Art (WFA) for the past 7 years and strives to connect beautiful artworks with collectors who love them. WFA is a 22-year-old mid to advance career gallery in the heart of Denver’s museum district showcasing original contemporary art, which features group exhibitions from a diverse roster. As Gallery Director, she works to build strong relationships with collectors and artists that are founded on trust. Her goal is to learn about her clients to guide them towards collecting artwork that reflects their authenticity, either through resonating with the subject matter, aligning with their passions, or telling an aspect of their life story. Everyday WFA works to ensure that their exhibitions align with their mission: to give our artists a space to connect with the greater public presenting work that uplifts, heals, and is emotionally evocative, while also constantly navigating the balance between commerce and creativity.

As an art lover, Libby has been fortunate to have the arts as a constant in her life. She began her art path studying studio art with a focus in printmaking at Mount Holyoke College in MA, and interning at Dieu Donne Paper Mill and Lower East Side Print Shop in New York, assisting artists including Kara Walker, Ann Hamilton and Ursula Von Rydingsvard.  As often as she can, Libby continues to make and sell her own work and appreciates having both perspectives of the artist and the arts professional.

Libby is an active arts advocate and strives to share her passion for the arts in everything that she does. She now has been in the Denver arts community for over a decade working, jurying, guest curating and serving as a board member for institutions including Art Students League of Denver, Access Gallery, Golden Triangle Neighborhood Association, PlatteForum, 5280 Trail- Acoma Segment, Curtis Center, Denver Lights and numerous Denver Art Museum committees including Culture Haus, Denver Art Conservation Committee and Museum Friends.

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2024 Visual Art Fellowship Recipients

Aubrey Edwards, Laramie

Edwards’ work intersects the academic, creative, applied, and public spheres. She is a photographer by trade and a cultural anthropologist and historical archaeologist by training.

Her research interests include: landscapes and material culture of resistance, the archaeology of capitalism and wage work, collectivism and socialism during westward expansion, and interdisciplinary memory keeping practices on landscapes of labor, organizing and racist violence.. 

She is the founder and executive director of Alces Community Works, a public anthropology organization that works alongside community members in Wyoming to preserve and share multimedia stories of people and place.

Aubrey is a youth advocate and a healing-centered / trauma-sensitive arts educator. She has worked with young people and co-created space in an array of capacities for over 20 years. She is the cofounder of Laramie’s annual Youth Justice Institute where young folks learn advocacy tools while making media and interrogating the state’s juvenile justice system, centering their voices in conversations around juvenile justice reform in Wyoming.   

See Aubrey’s work here.

Wendell Field, Kelly

Wendell Locke Field was born in 1965 in Kalamazoo, Michigan and raised on a dairy farm. It was there on the farm, in the woods and lakes that he began to observe, sketch and develop a deep curiosity and love of the natural world.    

Supposing that it shouldn’t be possible to do your life for a living, Wendell graduated from the University of Wyoming in 1988 with a degree in agriculture economics. It didn’t take him long to realize that ignoring his true calling would be his soul’s death.  

For the better part of three decades, Field has created art that reflects his deliberately simple life in Jackson Hole while also traveling extensively in Asia, Africa, North and South America. A profound recognition of spirit is always present in Wendell’s work. His mountains reflect authority, his villages appear as places of soulful refuge and throughout all there is a collective grace.

See Wendell’s work here.

Adrianna Hinds, Cheyenne

Spending her childhood summers helping her grandparents in the Plains of Colorado peeling freshly picked corn and using the husks to braid crosses, gods eyes and dolls. Adrianna immediately fell in love with creating with her hands and learning about her heritage and culture. Keeping Hispanic and American basket making alive while blending in newer techniques like Nantucket weaving has become her top priority. 

Adrianna uses American sourced items such as reed, cane, hardwood rims, bases and handles. She enjoys harvesting raw materials from the mountains to adorn her baskets with. She hounds for agates, opals, petrified woods, random wood pieces, nuts, antlers, cattails and feathers. This makes her baskets more modern and more stylized towards the people of the mountainous west. 

Select weavings are carefully created and handled with pure intent and love. Each piece should only be handled while in a state of a pure mind and positivity. Never to release negative energy or spirit into the objects. A technique used when braiding or brushing hair and fibers in Hispanic culture. Each object made in this manner serves a purpose, feeling or memory of the land.

See Adrianna’s work here.

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Previous Visual Arts Fellowship Recipients

Previous Recipients