Gary Hill, Guilt (detail), mixed media, 2006. photo: David Regen

Gary Hill

• 2011 Arts Innovator Special Recognition Award

About the Artist

Gary Hill (Seattle) has worked with a broad range of media including sculpture, sound, video, writing, installation and performance. He has had solo exhibitions in major museums throughout the world and received numerous awards and honors, most notably, fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Rockefeller and Guggenheim Foundations; the Leone d’Oro Prize for Sculpture at the Venice Biennale, a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship Award, the Kurt-Schwitters-Prize and most recently, The Stranger’s Genius Award in film. Hill has received honorary doctorates from The Academy of Fine Arts Poznan, Poland (2005) and Cornish College of the Arts, Seattle (2011).

Gary also received Artist Trust Fellowships in 1988 and 2002.

Read a special letter from Gary about the impact of supporting art at its source.

Claire Cowie

• 2009 Grants for Artist Projects
• 2004 Fellowship

About the Artist

Claire Cowie (Seattle) received her BFA in Drawing and Printmaking from Washington University in St. Louis in 1997, and her MFA in Printmaking from the University of Washington in 1999. She is locally represented by James Harris Gallery. Recent work includes an exhibition of sculpture at Cherry de los Reyes Gallery, a residency and exhibition at Henry Art Gallery, and a solo show of collage work at James Harris Gallery (as reviewed in Art Forum). Cowie was also awarded the 2004 Neddy Artist Fellowship from the Behnke Foundation and her work was featured in a 2004 exhibition at Tacoma Art Museum that highlighted work from Neddy Fellowship recipients over the prior ten years.

Claire received a 2009 GAP 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.

Claire also received a 2000 GAP.

Read a special letter from Claire and her husband, artist Leo Berk, about the impact of supporting art at its source.

Harold Taw

• 2007 Grants for Artist Projects
• 2009 EDGE Professional Development Program

About the Artist

Seattle writer Harold Taw’s debut novel, Adventures of the Karaoke King (Amazon Encore 2011), is a karaoke grail quest about people who keep falling just short of their dreams. A participant in the 2009 Artist Trust EDGE Program for Writers and the 2011 Jack Straw Writers Program, Harold received an Artist Trust GAP to research his second novel Saturday’s Child, garnered accolades for his screenplay Dog Park, and had his work featured on National Public Radio and in a New York Times bestselling anthology. Harold graduated from Yale Law School and as a Fulbright Scholar studied prostitution and the AIDS epidemic in rural Thailand.

Read a special letter from Harold about being a creative catalyst.

David Shields

• 2007 Grants for Artist Projects
• 2003 Fellowship

About the Artist

David Shields (Seattle) is the author of seven books, including Black Planet: Facing Race During an NBA Season and, most recently, Enough About You: Adventures in Autobiography. His essays and stories have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, Yale Review, Village Voice, Salon, Slate, McSweeney’s, and Utne Reader. Shields has written reviews for the New York Times Book Review, Los Angeles Times Book Review, Boston Globe, and Philadelphia Inquirer. He has received two NEA awards in fiction, two PEN Syndicated Fiction awards, an Ingram-Merrill Foundation Award, a Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation grant, and a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship. He lives with his wife and daughter in Seattle, where he is a professor in the English department at the University of Washington. Since 1996, he has also been a member of the faculty in Warren Wilson College’s low-residency MFA program for writers, in Asheville, North Carolina. 

David received a 2007 GAP to work on his novel-in-progress about the relationship between a husband and wife.

David also received a 1991 Fellowship and 1997 GAP.

As part of his Fellowship’s Meet the Artist requirements, David lead a panel discussion with Steve Kelley (sports columnist for the Seattle Times); Fred Moody (former editor of the Seattle Weekly); and Kayla Burt, former University of Washington Women’s basketball player. The panel discussed their perspectives on why “sports are a force that gives us meaning.”  The discussion was followed by audience questions. About 30 people were in attendance.

Read a special letter from David about the impact of supporting art at its source.

Miho Takekawa

• 2005 Fellowship
• 2008 Centrum Residency

About the Artist

Miho Takekawa (Spokane County) is an accomplished marimba performer and arranger playing Japanese folk music mixed with jazz and Latin rhythms. Her unusual style has taken her all over the world as a performer and arranger and provided her the opportunity to play with some of the best musical talent in the Northwest. While completing her MA at the University of Washington, Takekawa received the Boeing Scholarship for excellence in percussion performance three years in a row. Originally from Tokyo, she received her BA in percussion performance and music education at Kunitachi School of Music in Tokyo and has been playing percussion for operas, musicals, symphonies, percussion ensembles, ethnic music ensembles, and jazz bands in both Japan and the United States for many years. In addition to her own releases, Takekawa has performed with various groups, including Orchestra Seattle, Philharmonia Orchestra Northwest, Contemporary Chamber Composer and Player, Seattle Creative Orchestra, and Akoma, a West African drum ensemble.

As part of her Fellowship’s Meet the Artist requirements, Miho held a CD release concert at the Ethnic Cultural Theater in Seattle with her band, the Miho & Diego Duo. The 30 audience members (who braved a major snowstorm to attend) were treated to a program featuring original compositions as well as covers, combining Japanese folk music with Andean and other South American music.

Read a special letter from Miho about how Artist Trust changed her life.

photo: Chase Jarvis

Lynn Shelton

• 2005 Paul Goode Ireland Residency

About the Artist

I got my start as an experimental and documentary filmmaker before writing and directing my first feature-length film, We Go Way Back, which surprised everyone (myself included) by winning the Grand Jury Award at the 2006 Slamdance Film Festival. My second feature film, My Effortless Brilliance, was awarded the Special Jury Prize at the Atlanta Film Festival. Humpday, my third feature, premiered to critical acclaim at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival and has been distributed internationally by Magnolia Pictures. In 2009 I was featured on the front page of The New York Times’ Arts & Leisure section, and Seattle Magazine flattered me as one of the Most Influential People of the Year. Earlier this year, I was honored with the John Cassavetes Award at the Film Independent’s Spirit Awards. I recently wrapped the MTV series, $5 cover, showcasing Seattle’s hottest up-and-coming bands.

Read a special letter from Lynn about the impact of supporting art at its source.

Jim Woodring

• 2003 Grants for Artist Projects
• 2008 Fellowship

About the Artist

Jim Woodring (Seattle) has made great sacrifices in order to keep a clear view down the corridor of his years so he may not forget the glorious confusion of his early youth. He heard voices, saw apparitions, and experienced awful paranoia, which have all become basis for his artwork. Jim has been exhibited in Australia, France, Japan, The Netherlands, Germany, and Seattle.

Jim received a 2003 GAP to purchase a Halley easel, a halogen floor lamp, a taboret, sable brushes, brush cleaner, and paint. “For the past ten years I have been creating a series of charcoal drawings representing various aspects of a personal vision which I have nurtured and exploited since childhood.” Since 2001, Woodring has begun to make oil paintings based on these drawings. He intends to use the equipment and supplies purchased with grant funding to begin Worse and Worse, the crucial image from the series of drawings.

As part of his Fellowship’s Meet the Artist requirements, Jim presented his first full-length graphic novel, Weathercraft, to students and faculty in the Fine Arts Department at Washington State University in Pullman. He showed the novel page-by-page and gave a narrative explanation of the story. He also spent considerable time talking about Artist Trust and urging students to learn about the organization.

See a special thank-you note to Artist Trust that only Jim could create.

photo: Marc Von Borstel

Olivier Wevers

• 2008 Fellowship

About the Artist

Olivier Wevers (Seattle) spent the past 17 years of his life as a classical ballet dancer, performing in Columbia City Ballet, Royal Winnipeg Ballet and Pacific Northwest Ballet. As a choreographer, he seeks to transform established traditional vocabulary and present ballet in a new perspective. Olivier’s Shindig expands the manipulation of classic choreography to other elements of the performance including interpretations of the tutu and eliminating performance structure in favor of series vignettes that played out in front of an audience like flipping through a photo album.

Read a special letter from Olivier about being a creative catalyst.

Leo Berk

• 2010 Arts Innovator Award
• 2006 Grants for Artist Projects

About the Artist

Leo Berk (Seattle) creates works relating to real and depicted or imagined space using diverse materials in contemporary industrial processes, including computer modeled and fabricated artworks. Berk has used this technology extensively including exploring Naj Tunich, an ancient cave in Guatemala, and the Quecreek Mine in Pennsylvania. Through his innovative use of technology, Berk is able to create works of art depicting the negative space of these caves. Berk has spent six years learning to use this technology, effectively making it an extension of his own hand and expanding his vocabulary. He is represented by Lawrimore Project.

Leo received a 2006 GAP for the purchase of materials and processes that will make possible a large-scale architectural work. In the past, Berk has created works for private clients, by commission, and to their specifications. “I would like to use this grant to free myself from the limitations of the commission relationship that has in the past made this [scale of] work possible. I am proposing, in essence, to commission myself to develop a…work to be shown at a public, non-profit venue.”

Leo also received a 2001 GAP and 2002 Fellowship.

Read a special letter from Leo and his wife, artist Claire Cowie, about the impact of supporting art at its source.