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. Applications are now closed and will open in the spring.
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. She holds an Associate of Applied Science in Photography (ACC), a Bachelor of Journalism (UT), a Master of Science in Urban Studies (UNO), and a Master of Art in Anthropology and Environment and Natural Resources with a graduate certificate in Geographic Information Systems and Technology (UWYO).
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 presently working with community members and former mine workers in Kemmerer, Wyoming, to create an interactive ethnographic website preserving mining heritage as the town transitions from coal to nuclear power.
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. Her editorial and commercial photography client list includes: BBC, Comedy Central, Esquire, Fender Guitars, The Grammys, HBO, Magnolia Pictures, Nike, Playboy, Red Bull, The United Nations, Time, Volcom and innumerable magazines and record labels. Her collaborators have ranged from Spike Lee to Rebecca Solnit to the Smithsonian Institution. She has been the recipient of numerous grants and residencies, has exhibited nationally and internationally, and has taught visual art to learners ages 6-70 years old.
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 loves using her background in anthropology to connect organizations, policy makers, artists and teachers in jointly amplifying youth voice and action. 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.
You can find her scanning the sky for migratory birds and scanning the ground for archaeological objects.
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.
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.
2023: Marcus Dewey, Susan Moldenhauer, Eileen Nistler
2022: Al Hubbard, DaleRae Green, Kyle Reed
2021: Diana Baumbach, Shawn Bush, Rachel Hawkinson
2020: Wendy Bredehoft, Garrett Cruzan, Favian Hernandez
2019: Elaine Olafson Henry Joe Arnold, Andy Kincaid
2018: Margaret K. Hayden, Patrick Kikut, Robert Martinez
2017: Bailey Russel, Florence Alfano McEwin, Shelby Shadwell
2016: Susan Moldenhauer, Jennifer Rife, Georgia Rowswell
2015: Diana Baumbach, June Glasson, Thomas Macker
2014: Suzanne Morlock, Do Palma, Aaron Wallis
2013: Abbie Miller, Susan Thulin, John Haberman
2012: Joe Arnold, Chuck Kimmerle, Jenny Wuerker
2011: Jenny Dowd, David Klaren, Adrienne Vetter
2010: David Jones, Shelby Shadwell, Penelope Caldwell
2009: Florence Alfano McEwin, David Henderson, Leah Hardy
2008: Matt Flint, Doug Russell, Ricki Klages
2006-07: Ashley Hope Carlisle, Zane Lancaster, Jim Laybourne, Ginnie Madsen, Mark Ritchie, Jon Madsen
2004-05: Penelope Caldwell, Lorre Hoffman, Mike McClure, Connie Norman, Curtis Olson, Bronwyn Minton
2002-03: Elijah Cobb, Kaidi Morgan Dunston, Pat Jeffers, Melissa Malm, Laurie Thal, Adam Jahiel, Marta Amundson
2000-01: Leah Hardy, Ken Kidder, Ricki Klages, Bronwyn Minton, Jon Madsen, Linda Ryan
1998-99: Duane Brant, Francis Fox, Laura Guinan, Mark Ritchie, Steve Schrepferman, Sue Sommers
1997: Frederic Joy, Phyllis Kloda, Scott Torkelson
1996: Marta Amundson, Cindy Warnock, Laura Lacy
1995: Raphael Di Luzio, Adam Jahiel, Christine Karkow
1994: Mary-Alice Huemoeller, Sava Malachowski, Maurice Mayer, Devendra Shrikhande
1993: Pip Brant, Bettina Demetz, Jessica Holt, Susan Stone
1992: Christy Love, Kathy Gaye Shiroki, John Giarrizzo, Dean Johnson
1991: Jerry Rodriguez, Craig Satterlee, Deborah Throop, Sharon Waldron
1990: Patrick Christensen, Gregory Charles Gaylor, Lynne Hull, Linda Ryan
1989: Stan Dolega, Larry Friedman, Robert Seabeck, Laurie Thal
1988: Sandra Chupka, Richard Evans, Carl Niederer, Gary Poush
1987: John Giarrizzo, John Haberman, Elizabeth C. Howell, Dean Johnson
1986: Val Brinkerhoff, Bruce Dehnert, Laura Lacy, Sylvia Long