In 2009, Artist Trust awarded $89,803 in Grants for Artist Projects (GAP) to 61 outstanding Washington State artists. The GAP program provides up to $1,500 to individual artists for various projects. In 2009, Artist Trust received 933 applications from artists working in all disciplines across Washington State. In addition, Artist Trust awarded two residencies as part of the Artist Trust Centrum New Works Residency Program and one residency as part of the Camano Island Residency. For more information on residency programs click here.

The information included in each grant recipient profile below is based on each recipient’s application materials submitted at the time of application.  

EMERGING & CROSS-DISCIPLINARY ARTS

Randy Jones, Seattle, King County, ($1300) to cover purchase of equipment, rental fees, and time off to concentrate on series of live audiovisual performances that use new media to refocus on “Deep Landscape: Seattle.” Randy uses various kinds of controller hardware to sense his gestures, which are then turned into sound and image in his audiovisual performances. By manipulating forms sampled from the landscape in a live performance, he hopes to bring each viewer’s attention to the many filters – technological, cultural, and perceptual – through which society perceives the ecosystems of which we are a part. http://2uptech.com

Allison Kudla, Seattle, King County, ($1500) towards material, production and labor costs for the creation of a living natural system in the form of a manufactured decorative pattern. “Decorative Growth Pattern,” originally demonstrated as a site-specific installation for Seattle’s McLeod Residence, is to be a newer, larger version that involves a digital projection and a camera to allow participants to see all of the growth/decay phases over the course of its six-month long show in Gijon, Spain. www.washington.edu/dxarts/profile_home.php?who=kudla

Reza Safavi, Pullman, Whitman County, ($1500) for the purchase of six mini LCD screens to be mounted in six red gas cans to help complete an interactive video installation work. As a development from a previous, smaller scale piece, “Video Tanks” is to be a new work that involves multiple gas tanks networked physically and virtually together. Reza’s current interests stand in the examination of how the presence of technology in daily life shapes human experience. www.hi-reza.com

Paurl Walsh, Seattle, King County, ($1500) for artist fees and the purchasing of programming software in the making of “Bridging Wounds,” an evening-length multimedia performance. The project tells the story of a girl sitting at an airport waiting for her flight. It begins as a purely filmic experience that progressively is drawn out and brought into the audience’s physical space through the use of light, dance, and live music. Paurl’s role is in the audio production and the design of the custom surround sound system for the live performance. His interests lie in the experimentation and exploration of spatial audio.

LITERARY ARTS

Kelli Russell Agodon, Kingston, Kitsap County, ($1500) to assist in finding a publisher. Kelli is currently completing her second poetry manuscript titled “Letters from the Emily Dickenson Room.” In these poems she tries to explore how and if people can find calmness in a chaotic world. Many of the poems were created during her visit to the Sylvia Beach Hotel where she stayed during a writing retreat. www.agodon.com

Lowell Brower, Seattle, King County, ($1500) to subsidize living and travel expenses associated with the completion of his novel. Entitled “The Safari Guide,” it is based loosely on his own experiences as a Fulbright scholar in Tanzania. The work follows several characters as they attempt to run from the various traumas of their pasts in East Africa. Lowell’s current work started as his thesis during his time as an MFA candidate at the University of Washington.

Thomas Brush, Seattle, King County, ($1490) to pay for paper, printing, postage and entry fees to various publishers. The nearly finished project, titled “Oaxaca – A book of Poetry,” is a new collection of poems that cover various subjects from the streets of Seattle, to the deserts of Mexico, to reflections on work, and love and loss of family. Thomas’ view on poetry is that it is a living, viable art that should be maintained.

Wendy Call, Seattle, King County, ($1500) to cover living expenses in order for her to work full-time on the revisions to “No Word for Welcome,” a creative nonfiction work. Wendy’s book is composed of the stories of a gay Zapotec man, a young Ikoots preschool teacher, and a Huave fisherman and questions what inspires people to organize themselves into movements for social change. Wendy’s work is framed by her own experiences, living and working for more than three years in a place, culture, and ecology that were very different from her own. www.wendycall.com

Oliver De la Paz, Deming, Whatcom County, ($1500) for purchasing a laptop computer in aiding the creation of a poetry book manuscript titled “Grace Equations.” The poems are biographical and theological in nature, deep-rooted observations that wrestle with the speaker’s new identity as a father in a world filed with strife.  Oliver’s meditations on Eschatology incorporate his interests in the notion of grace, meaning, and the afterlife. www.oliverdelapaz.com

Alma Garcia, Seattle, King County, ($1500) to fund childcare, allowing the author to transform a short story collection into a novel. The work of fiction, entitled “Shallow Waters,” is set in the desert border city of El Paso, Texas, and follows the harrowing year in the lives of two interconnected, multicultural families after a family member disappears.

Ed Harkness, Shoreline, King County, ($1500) to create time off work, along with defraying costs of copying and submitting his manuscript to various publishers. Ed’s poetry manuscript, “Boiling a Watch,” is about time and what it is made of, how it smells when cooked, how it tastes, what happens when the steam of time clouds one’s glasses. His current plans are to put his poems through the editing phase in place of teaching summer quarter classes.

Donna Miscolta, Seattle, King County, ($1500) to allow her in-depth studies during a residency. The project is a collection of memoir-type essays about various family events such as her Filipino grandfather’s boxing career reign in California, an uncle’s funeral that brings her family to its barrio of origin, and a visit to an expatriate uncle in Spain. Donna’s work follows the traditional story structure in creating insightful experiences that reflect the themes of immigration, assimilation, and language.

Sharma Shields, Spokane, Spokane County, ($1200) for financial assistance with the process of sending her manuscript to various literary agents. Sharma’s short story collection, “Field Guide to Monsters of the Inland Northwest,” puts women in central character roles, and is deeply imaginative, at times fabulist. Alienation, disappointment, selfishness and private morality are identified as large themes in her work. The author left a lucrative sales position out-of-state to return to Washington and focus on her fiction.

 
Jason Skipper, Tacoma, Pierce County, ($1500) to help defray the cost of living during the summer. Jason’s short story collection takes place in Tacoma and revolves around 15 people who, because of death, disease, language difficulties, sexuality, and numerous other reasons, find themselves isolated and estranged from friends and family. Characters include a Nagasaki era survivor, a lesbian couple, a university student with a crush on his English professor, and a divorced woman inflicted by AIDS.

Jill Widner, Yakima, Yakima County, ($1500) to allow her to return to writing instead of teaching summer school. “The Smell of Sulphur” is a novel in progress that fictionalizes her experiences growing up in Indonesia where Jill lived as the daughter of a petroleum engineer from 1963 to 1969. The book is concerned with the ambivalent line between fiction and memoir. Jill has been an English instructor since 1993, the year she graduated from Iowa Writer’s workshop program, is a past Fellowship Recipient and EDGE for Writers Participant.

MEDIA ARTS

Tess Martin, Seattle, King County, ($1500) for materials and equipment to make a film on the arrival of an entity into a land where buses fly, buildings are on stilts and word bubbles appear when you speak. The project is to be a stop-motion, paper cutout animation, linked to the artist’s stay in Ghana. Although clearly stemming from Tess’ personal experiences, the film is to include puppets with masked heads, flights of fancy and symbolism, and a detailed paper universe.

Heather Dew Oaksen, Seattle, King County, ($1500) to go towards production costs for a location shooting of interviews throughout the State for the feature documentary, “It’s About Time.” The project will be composed of tales told from the first-person point of view occuring over a period of 15 years. Heather’s link to the subjects interviewed creates the foundation for the piece.  By crosscutting footage between two time frames, audiences are submitted to the tragic and arguably inevitable detour those human characters follow from young delinquent to repeat offender. www.heatherdewoaksen.com

Lucy Ostrander, Bainbridge Island, Kitsap County, ($1500) to cover the rights in incorporating archival footage into her documentary. Titled “Fumiko Hayashida: The Woman Behind the Symbol,” the documentary is a portrait of Fumiko Hayashida whose 1942 photograph has over time been transformed into a symbol of the Japanese American Internment history. Originally designed as a short project, Lucy decided to take on the creation of a full-length film while capturing footage of 97 year-old Fumiko and daughter Natalie’s pilgrimage to the original Minidoka concentration camp in Idaho State. www.stourwater.com

PERFORMING ARTS

Corrie Befort, Anacortes, Skagit County, ($1500) to help defray costs associated with development, including rehearsal space and artist fees, in the creation of “Man On The Beach,” a new dance and sound piece selected for On the Boards’ Northwest New Works Festival in Seattle. The piece will be a series of darkly humorous, highly physical, sound-soaked vignettes, including a duet in which a quiet man walks with his head in a cloud of swirling, crashing white chairs.www.cbefort.com

Jherek Bischoff, Seattle, King County, ($1500) to pay the artists who will be performing his orchestral composition at Town Hall in Seattle. Jherek has a number of years of experience in musical performance, ranging from orchestral composition, to arrangement and performance. This local involvement got him linked to the Degenerate Arts Orchestra, which consisted of 48 of the city’s finest musicians. For this Town Hall performance, he will assemble a 35-person orchestra to play 12 of his compositions on September 11, 2009.

Gust Burns, Seattle, King County, ($1500) for funding the reconstruction process of a piano for an installation project at Gallery 1412 in Seattle. The piece is to be comprised of reassembled instruments from various piano parts. The finished installation, comprised of the new instruments along with assemblages of unused piano parts, will include an edited audio recording of the disassembly and reconstruction processes. Gust’s work revolves around expanding his creative practice to include spatial and environmental aspects, in creating an environment that exists over the course of days during which visitors can explore and experience at their own pace. www.gustburns.blogspot.com

Katie Freeze, Seattle, King County, ($1500) for rental of studio space with studio engineer and musician fees.  She is creating the orchestral score for the short film titled “Beauregard,” which follows a few minutes in the life of a young Japanese actress who attempts and fails to secure a role in a play set during the American Civil War. In keeping with the Nouvelle Vague style of the film, the score will be heavily jazz-influenced in the manner of 1960's French cinema soundtracks. This film will mark Katie’s third Seattle-based film collaboration. www.katiefreeze.com

Gin Hammond, Bellevue, King County, ($1200) for crew hiring fees. The project, entitled “Returning The Bones,” is a solo performance that will be taken on in the very fluid style of her previous project, “The Syringa Tree,” in which the ability to tell the story effectively depends entirely on the ability of the actor. This performance is to be accompanied by the companion piece, “The Westerbork Serenade.” After rehearsing and performing the two plays locally, Gin has plans on touring the show both nationally and internationally. www.ginhammond.com

Brian Kooser, Seattle, King County, ($1500) for time and materials to create a new piece of puppet theatre. “Bloody Henry” will utilize Bunraku puppets on an elaborate castle set piece as its major storytelling device and will include projections, shadow puppets and prerecorded projected film work to establish place and time.  Giant puppets will form an iconic Catholic Church that is destroyed by Henry VIII’s desire for a divorce. Punch and Judy style hand puppets will be used to show other incidental scenes, and a minstrel or two will provide music with period instruments. www.briankooser.com

Ricki Mason, Seattle, King County, ($1500) to hire additional artists to contribute to the post development phase of her project. “Lou Henry at Home” is an evening-length contemporary dance theater solo performed in the artist’s apartment for an audience of five to eight people. The piece is a fantasy version of Ricki, more male and more female, quicker to declare an opinion and quicker to change it. It will premier in 2010 and run bi-weekly for three months. The award granted Ricki will able her to rehearse for four consecutive weeks in Fall 2009.

Suzanne Morrison, Seattle, King County, ($1500) for development and research funds, business travel, and producing six workshop performances of the show in both New York and Seattle. Inspired by the dark beauty of the Northwest and the haunting stories of the people who knew and loved homegrown serial killers, “Your Own Personal Alcatraz” is the story of a community, a family, and the people who walk through our lives who we may love, but never fully know. The piece is an autobiographical solo show about the perils of island living, both in literal and metaphorical sense. www.suzannemorrison.blogspot.com

Tikka Sears, Seattle, King County, ($1500) to pay for travel costs associated with conducting interviews, and to cover time off to work on script adaptation for a theatre piece. “Below U.S.” is an original project that traverses America’s divided cultures, aiming at the problem of people in the U.S. hoping to make a permanent boundary separating the U.S. from Mexico by pushing for the construction of an insurmountable wall. The script will be adapted from interviews conducted in Salem, Oregon and Miami creating a blend of innovative theatre and humor that takes audiences on an odyssey.

Juliana Svetlitchnaia, Bothell, Snohomish County, ($1500) in covering studio recording, mastering, artwork and production of a music CD. Juliana is a singer and ethnomusicologist specializing in Russian folk music.  For the last 20 years she has been collecting and learning ancient Russian songs from expeditions to remote Russian Villages where these songs existed for centuries and were carried orally from generation to generation. Unique songs that are truly beautiful, this project is an effort to preserve and promote a genuine culture. www.ethnorussia.com

Montana von Fliss, Seattle, King County, ($1500) to pay artist wages, and boost the marketing budget in an effort to reach a wider audience. “Cancer: The Musical!” is a 90-minute original solo comedic theatre piece about death, loss, and recovery from grief. It revolves around her dad’s affliction with cancer, the experience being his sole caregiver, and the eventual grief from his passing. As a framework for the experience, Montana uses the scientific method to try and find answer to the question: How do you measure loss? www.montanavonfliss.com 

VISUAL ARTS

Sean Albert, Tukwila, King County, ($1500) to help offset the costs of polishing a large glass sculpture. Recent progress in his work includes developing a technique to suspend colored threads of glass in a solid mass of clear glass, and hand pulling molten glass into 40-foot long strands that are later broken into many three-inch long pieces. His work often attempts to use glass to capture and manipulate light, freeze time or movement, like a three-dimensional snap shot of what the material was like when it was liquid. www.travergallery.com/gallery_artist_details/Sean-Albert.aspx

Julie Alpert, Seattle, King County, ($1500) for the purchase of a digital camera and stop-motion animation software. Julie creates installations that are ephemeral, immediate, playful responses to the architecture of the space they inhabit. Improvised using disposable or found materials such as roadside furniture, house paint, contact paper, and duct tape, she often removes the function of the materials and focuses on creating illusionist and self-referential areas of interest. Since her installations inevitably get destroyed, she is curious about exploiting the creation and destruction processes. www.juliealpert.com Julie's project can be found on her website at www.juliealpert.com/work/video . 

Jessixa Bagley, Seattle, King County, ($1500) to purchase an ergonomic drafting chair and a proper drawing desk. Her latest drawing series, “Explore and Conquer,” is another reflection on the artist’s penchant for duality. There is commentary on how silly it is that humans think they can control massive bodies of land, animals, people, and spaces. Jessixa’s intricate drawings are created through the use of very small pens, intricate line work, and painting with fine brushes.

Alicia Basinger, Seattle, King County, ($1500) to cover costs for materials, rental and artist fees on a permanent, large, sculptural light structure installation at the Kirkland Arts Center. She will be building the piece for the main front staircase entryway, currently unused. The installation will cover 28’x6’ of ceiling space. Alicia is interested primarily in the fusion between the functional and sculptural aspects of a light structure. The installation acts as a hybrid between contemporary commercial minimalist chandeliers and architectural elements.

Gretchen Bennett, Seattle, King County, ($1500) to offset the production costs of a video series, including sound recording, editing, and final presentation. These new video pieces demonstrate a strong commitment to a new medium for the artist in which she explores parallel themes to those in her recent drawing series examining the origins of the members of the rock band Nirvana and the landscape that shaped them. www.gretchenbennett.com

Lanny Bergner, Anacortes, Skagit County, ($1500) to offset a portion of the cost to attend Vermont Studio Center’s residency program where he will focus his studies on drawing, an activity he has neglected over the years, due mainly to the labor-intensive nature of his sculpture work. He is also intent on devoting some of the residency time to organizing a lecture on Gardening and Art, joining his two passions in pictorial references to his artwork through the lens of gardening activity. Lanny has been a professional artist since receiving his MFA in sculpture in 1983. home.wavecable.com/~lbergner

 

Nicholas Brown, Seattle, King County, ($1500) for purchasing material, and one year of print studio rental at Sev Shoon Art Center in Seattle where Nicholas will make eight underbrush prints in editions of fifteen each to be shown at Seattle’s 4Culture Gallery during the 2009-2010 season. The imagery he uses in his series of black and white linocut prints comes from organic geometry found in the undergrowth landscape of the Northwest. Nicholas will bring together contemporary technology with the most primitive form of printmaking to create complex images using solid black ink or white paper. www.nicholasbrown.com

Buddy Bunting, Seattle, King County, ($1500) to aid in framing and installation costs for an upcoming solo show at Crawl Space Gallery in Seattle. Tentatively titled “high living,” the show will be composed of large framed and unframed works on paper. Modifications to existing gallery walls will be necessary to accommodate the works which will measure up to 30’ in width. www.buddybunting.com

Rebecca Chernow, Seattle, King County, ($1500) to increase the scale and variance of the individual and composite objects she makes while broadening the range of individuals who will contribute to the process. Rebecca’s interests lie in the concept and existence of the “throw-away” culture in which she is both producer and consumer. As an artist using glass, she works in a costly and specialized medium and finds parallels between the fruits of her line of labor and the everyday commodities she produces; objects that are often created, purchased, used and discarded. www.vetriglass.com/artists/chernow_main.html

Claire Cowie, Seattle, King County, ($1500) to cover materials and print studio fees required for producing a series of etchings. Claire intends on creating “Panorama War,” a series of six etchings that thematically and visually connect to each another as one panoramic scene. Claire wants to produce a small edition of prints that depict a narrative structure that is tied by a continuous horizon and repeated elements that incorporate as subject matter the perceived confusion of boundaries and the chaos of personal identity resulting from war.  Inspired by Goya’s set of aquatint prints Los Desastres De la Guerra and the nation’s current relationship with various global conflicts, Claire has returned to her original media of printmaking to achieve this new body of work.
www.jamesharrisgallery.com/Artists/Claire%20Cowie/cowie.htm

Molly Epstein, Seattle, King County, ($1500) for financial support in the development of a body of work at Gallery 4Culture during their 2009-2010 season. Molly was awarded an exhibit to pursue her process of achieving smooth, sterile surfaces on stainless steel for device engineering and development. Her work has also encompassed using electronic sensors in communicating how physical experiences can intensify emotional awareness.

Andrew Fallat, Seattle, King County, ($1500) to defray the cost of construction and documentation of a portable stone-skipping machine. Andrew plans to make a machine capable of skipping custom ground or found stones in urban waterways large and small. The artist wants this piece to demonstrate the complexity of the actual activity in both physical and mental terms. This grant will allow him to generate more concise documentation.

Ellen George, Vancouver, Clark County, ($1500) to attend the BECon 2009 Conference, and Bullseye Glass Factory classes and lectures given by leading international glass artists.  Bullseye Glass has fabricated Ellen’s large-scale designs, with Ellen working alongside their lead technicians.  This opportunity will give Ellen hands-on experience in execution of artworks in glass.  Rob Wilcox writes “Ellen George makes small bright sculptures from polymer clay. Sometimes they connect into larger assemblages. Her work is delightfully minimal and oddly happy, maintaining a subtle lightness and maybe the idea that the shapes came from nature's stones and plantlife.”  www.pdxcontemporaryart.com/george

Erich Ginder, Seattle, King County, ($1500) in the creation of a large cave-shaped portable Gortex structure that will be habitable and address specific needs of the artists in this collaborative effort with artist Garek Druss. Outfitted with equipment of their own design, and equally part cultural critique, part self-mocking attempt to survive off the land, and using “The Alpha Strategy, or How to Prosper in the Crummy Years Ahead,” the artists call into question our ever-changing interaction with the surrounding landscape. Erich creates concept-driven functional works that can be experienced in everyday life. His collaborator Garek Druss works to examine the similarities and differences between the habits of the musician and visual artist. www.erichginder.com

Carol Gouthro, Seattle, King County, ($1500) for hiring fees in the creation of a professional web site and for conversion of 30 years of slide images of her ceramic work to digital format. This step would allow Carol to further her career in acquiring more gallery representation out of state, as well as teaching workshop opportunities at nationally recognized ceramic facilities such as Anderson Ranch, Penland School of Crafts, and Haystack School of Crafts. She has been asked to teach a workshop at Mendocino Arts Center in Fall 2009.
www.carolgouthro.com
 

Catherine Grisez, Seattle, King County, ($1500) to obtain equipment and materials to be used in the development of a new body of work intended for a show in the Fall of 2009 at Facèré Jewelry Art Gallery in Seattle. Catherine has been using her skills as a metalsmith to create medium to larger scale sculptures for 10 years. She intends to translate the techniques and processes of hollow forming, fabrication and electroforming into the fabrication of small-scale wearable art pieces conceptually inspired by her previous body of work. www.travergallery.com/gallery_artist_details/Catherine-Grisez.aspx

Julia Haack, Seattle, King County, ($1140) for purchase of better equipment in the construction of her first public art piece. Julia is making a wall sculpture titled “One Stitch,” so named because while using a defective band saw, she cut herself resulting in a visit to the emergency room and requiring one stitch. With the techniques made available by the use of her new equipment, Julia feels her craftsmanship will be improved and she will be able to return to work in her favored media, salvaged wood. www.juliahaack.blogspot.com

Annie Han and Daniel Mihalyo, Seattle, King County, ($1500) to acquire affordable video cards, three channel RAM, and high definition editing software to produce detailed animations and video. This artist team has returned from a recent fellowship in Rome with large amounts of captured digital data and plans to edit and produce experimental video work and digital prints for their project, “Looking at Nothing.” They used a laser scanning system donated by Leica Geosystems to make dozens of extremely detailed digital scans documenting the negative spaces throughout the ancient city. www.leadpencilstudio.com

Margot Quan Knight, Bellevue, King County, ($1500) for financial assistance in the completion of a photographic quilt project begun in October 2008. The project, titled “Mirror Quilts,” grows from Margot’s past work that used reflective surfaces to examine portraiture, and the gap between photographs, reflections, and reality. As her first post-MFA project, it is also a new step creatively: it is an attempt to take what she has learned from video, mirrors, and installations and bring those ideas back “home” to photography. www.margotknight.com

Allison Manch, Seattle, King County, $1300 to go towards a new series of textile pieces that explore ideas of westward expansion and Manifest Destiny.  This series will include embroidered images from Allison’s parent's move to the west coast as well as embroidered fabric maps and hand dyed and embellished vintage quilts. She will also reproduce iconic railroad construction images, early landscape photography from the 1860s, and popular imagery of western culture all with hand embroidery and found textiles. The working title for this series is “Gimme Shelter”.  GAP funds will be used to purchase an opaque projector, a light table, and to help finance framing and production costs. www.allisonmanch.com

Anne Mathern, Seattle, King County, ($1500) to cover the costs of production for performance and finished video. Anne’s current work centers on the formation of culture, particularly among people of her generation.  In this piece, “Goin’ Up The Country,” she and her friend-collaborator will recreate a TV studio performance of Canned Heat’s 60’s anthem onto video, as part of an exhibition focusing on a seemingly universal age specific dissatisfaction with things as they are. www.crawlspacegallery.com/members/mathern/mathern.htm

Chris McMullen, Seattle, King County, ($1500) to purchase a TIG welder for taking his work to another level of sophistication and precision that he is aiming to achieve. For the last eight years he has primarily been working in steel creating interactive, mechanical sculpture. Chris has discovered that in order to take his work even farther, the tools he uses to create must progress with time as well, keeping his skills current and sharp. It would allow him to expand the list of materials he can use such as bronze, aluminum, and stainless steel. www.chrismcmullenproductions.com

Allan Packer, Seattle, King County, ($1500) for materials purchased to bring completion to a sculpture. The work, titled “The Transformation of Existence and Property in Space and Time – Ka Ba Akh,” follows in the pattern of Allan’s work in referencing a scientific device, a mathematical equation, or a culturally-specific structure or belief in generating the conceptual basis of his pieces. The cryogenic apparatus is to be represented by a machine cast sarcophagus suspending an encapsulated translucent body casting. www.apacker.com

Vesna Pavlovic, Seattle, King County, ($1500) for funding the three development phases of a photography project. “Glass Collection” attempts to explore the allure of the glass medium in the Northwest through a series of historical, onsite research and photographic activities. The project will evolve in three distinct stages from historical research to experimentation and culminating with the installation’s presentation. In the attempt, she is attracted to exploring both the historical references, as well as contemporary examples of glass making. www.vesnapavlovic.com

Andrew Peterson, Seattle, King County, ($1500) to go towards materials purchase, and to cover exhibition expenses in a collaborative drawing project. As an artist, he strives to create an art practice that is both inclusive and collaborative in nature. The “Interactor” is simultaneously a drawing project, an open-ended social inquiry, and an opportunity for at-risk youth to be directly involved in contemporary art. Through his involvement at Sanctuary Art Center in Seattle’s U-District, Andrew has come to know several street-involved youth. He intends to invite these individuals to work with him on a future Interactor project.

Samantha Scherer, Seattle, King County, ($1500) for assistance in the production, presentation, documentation, and storage of her current project “Floodplains.” This project will examine the ways people cope in adverse circumstances and how the media records their reactions. It will result in a collection of larger watercolor drawings focusing further on the emptiness and minutiae of the captured events. Borrowing from images collected from various sources, Samantha reinterprets and personalizes contemporary culture in the drawn and painted snapshots. www.samanthascherer.com

Preston Singletary, Seattle, King County, ($1500) for research expenses on Tlingit culture to enhance his art and provide a deeper cultural context in which to work. The artist has been producing glass sculptures that feature themes of transformation, animal spirits and crests, shamanism, basketry, and cultural components of his tribe for over the last 20 years. He has been fortunate to have been mentored by such Native artists as Joe David, Clarissa Hudson and Norman Jackson. It is from these relationships that Preston has been working in the Northwest Coast style of form line design that is used in his artwork. www.prestonsingletary.com

Katy Stone, Seattle, King County, ($1500) is purchasing Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop as well as Wacom Tablet for assistance in the creation of digital drawings. Katy has recently been translating her drawings into digital files so that she could have them laser-cut out of metal to create singular objects or larger site-specific sculptural installations. This has opened up a whole new direction for her work including the time consuming process of translating into digital format. www.katystone.net

Perrin Teal-Sullivan, Seattle, King County, ($1500) to pay for transportation fees to Djupavik, Iceland, to follow up on an invitation to create a site-specific installation piece. “Time Changes Everything – An installation and drawing series at the Djupavik Herring Factory,” is an installation based on photos of the factory in its current state of decay. Perrin has developed it to reflect and emphasize the effects of time on the building, a now useless hull that awaits the ultimate judgment of wind and weather. www.perrintealsullivan.com

Brett Walker, Seattle, King County, ($1500) to enable the purchase of materials for the completion of a dozen sculptural pieces already in progress. Citing a wide range of cultural mediators and cinematic influences, his artistic output to this point has both traced his development as an individual and created a cornerstone from which he gets the ability to function in the world. His previous work is about the development of a real-life character, of establishing an identity and finding a way to live and interact within contemporary culture and society. www.everybodydoesntlikebrettwalker.com

Kinu Watanabe, Seattle, King County, ($1500) for purchasing a professional quality camera and gear. After recently graduating from the University of Washington, she has been producing a large volume of work for shows, and the necessity for access to photographic equipment has been growing. Kinu’s current work follows a reflection of her emotional interpretations of experiences through memories. Clay is the primary material used in installations that allow each individual to experience the piece from his or her own point of view.
www.potterynorthwest.org/Residencies/Watanabe.htm

Laura Wright, Seattle, King County, ($1500) for the research and production of an installation piece that uses simple applications of light and sound to emulate a summer night in Ohio. Laura will begin her research there, recording the sounds of the native fireflies. Laura is fascinated by the presence of thousands of insects communicating to each other during a typical summer Ohio night, including most memorably the lightning bug or firefly, which emits a soft pulsating light to signal to its own kind. Using simple technology in the form of the shadow lantern, Laura plans on creating a forest of fireflies.

Click here to view the list of 2009 GAP panelists.

Click here to view the 2009 GAP statistics.

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 Artist Trust’s investment in artists throughout Washington is possible because of the generosity of individual and institutional supporters who contribute generously throughout the year, our Benefit Art Auction sponsors and all who support art at its source through gifts to the annual fund.

For the 2009 Grants for Artist Projects, we are most grateful for contributions from the following individuals who donated at the $1,500 level and above:
Nancy and Buster Alvord, Joan Alworth and Peter Ackroyd, Harry and Merrily Applewhite, Shari and John Behnke, Paul and Debbi Brainerd, Sharon and Craig Campbell, Michael and Cathy Casteel, Toni Clayton and Pam Lindgren, Layne Cubell and Marcio Pacheco, Betsy and Peter Currie, Margaret Czeisler and Trevor Schraufnagel, David and Jane Davis, Friends of Jini Dellaccio, Cora Edmonds and Phil Crean, Britt Ericson, Helen Gamble, Katharyn Alvord Gerlich, Cheryl R. Hafer-Lott, Marlow Harris and JoDavid, Leonard and Norma Klorfine, Diane Lasko and Clint Diener, Alida and Christopher Latham, Karen Lorene and Don Bell, Jennifer McCausland, Jim and Maggie McDonald, Mia McEldowney and Bill Mitchell, Jeffrey Miller, Ana Pinto da Silva and Michael Cannon, Eddy Radar and Kevin Hoffberg, Larry and Jean Rohrschneider, Paul and Terri Schaake, Charyl Kay and Earl Sedlik, Jon and Mary Shirley, Catherine Eaton and David Skinner, Michael J. Smith and Jess Van Nostrand, Benita and Charles Staadecker, Vickie Strand and Mark DeCarufel, David and Dana Taft, Robert and Betty Tull, Lorraine W. Vagner, Merrill Wagner and Bob Ryman and Anonymous (1).

Artist Trust salutes our funding partners that support the GAP program:
Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, Bossak/Heilbron Charitable Foundation, Centrum, King County 4Culture, Seattle Mayor’s Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs, Norman Archibald Charitable Foundation, PONCHO, Seattle Art Dealers Association and the Washington Women’s Foundation.