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. Submissions are currently not being accepted. Applications for the next round of fellowships will open in spring 2020.

2020 Visual Arts Fellowship Recipients

Wendy Bredehoft | Laramie, WY

Wendy Lemen Bredehoft’s mixed media work investigates visual nuances of the world around us, focusing on details that contribute to understanding and responding to specific places and experiences. Married to a retired Wyoming game warden, they enjoy exploring together on what they call their “fishing and arting” trips.  Bredehoft was awarded a 2016 Wyoming Visual Art Fellowship Honorable Mention, has a national exhibition record, and artwork in public and private collections in the US and Canada. She attained an MFA in Visual Arts from Vermont College in 1996, and a BFA in Visual Arts from the University of Wyoming in 1984. She is currently president of the Wyoming Arts Alliance (WyAA), and a board member for the Western States Arts Federation (WESTAF). Bredehoft has been a cultural administrator, arts educator, arts advocate, community arts leader, grants writer and fundraiser, recreation director, floral designer, grocery clerk, substitute teacher and family wrangler. She has moved 30+ times in her life, making home in some stimulating and isolated places, including a ranch in the foothills of Colorado, a frontier town in northern Alberta, Canada, and a disappeared uranium mining community in central Wyoming. She currently works and lives in Laramie, Wyoming.

Garrett Cruzan | Laramie, WY

Garrett currently lives in Laramie, where he earned a BFA in Art with a minor in Disability Studies from UW in 2018.Born and raised in Billings, Montana, Garrett has spent most of his life in the West. At age 24 he quit his career as a heavy equipment/diesel technician and relocated to Laramie to attend college.While there, he received the Sheila Langlois Memorial Fellowship for Study Abroad in Art History and the Humanities, as well as awards for his artwork from the Universitiy’s Art Museum, and has been broadly recognized for his advocacy and commitment to diversity in the community. For the 2016-17 school year, he studied abroad at University College Utrecht in the Netherlands, focusing on philosophy and art history. Garrett served on several committees at the University of Wyoming, including the Access Initiative, the Shepard Symposium on Social Justice Planning Committee, the UW Accessibility Committee, and is proud to have co-founded the ParaTransit Advisory Committee. He also has an essay published in Barriers and Belonging: Personal Essays of Disability, which is an anthology exploring critical perspectives on disability.Garrett concentrates on conceptual art, addressing issues of identity, cultural production, and belonging. His current work reflects a growing concern for both collective and individual relationships with Big Data. In particular, his work examines the normalizing effects associated with data analysis – a process often resulting in erasure. By decontextualizing imagery, he asks important questions about authorship, ownership, and acceptable uses of the data we populate the internet with.

Favian Hernandez | Laramie, WY

Favian Hernandez creates an animal world from paper. His primary medium most of his life has been pen and paper. Though every piece still evolves from a sketch, over the last few years, he has moved on to paper mache to realize his creations. This process was ignited by memories of making piñatas with his mother as a child. You can see glimmers of its influence are apparent in his sculpting and painting techniques. In his new collection, Favian has challenged himself to sculpt more complex shapes, incorporating them into more elaborate pieces. He has worked mostly in paper mache, but also experimented with other materials, like wood, wire, and resin, that allowed him to better capture certain shapes and organic features.  These creations move from sketches on paper to be realized into something new and beautifully bizarre.

 

Honorable mentions were given to Peter Fine of Laramie and Stephen Mullins of Sheridan.

Previous Visual Arts Fellowship Recipients

List of Previous Recipients