Announcing the 2023 Twining Humber and SOLA Awards Recipients!
Published: June 27, 2023
Categories: Artists | Featured | Grants & Fellowships | Visual
Announcing the 2023 Twining Humber and SOLA Awards Recipients!
We are thrilled to award the 2023 Twining Humber Award to Terry Furchgott of King County and four SOLA Awards to Ann Reid of Skagit County, Blanca Santander of King County, René Westbrook of Thurston County, and Linda Wolf of Kitsap County!
The Twining Humber Award (THA) is an unrestricted award of $10,000 given annually to a Washington State self-identified woman visual artist, age 60 or over, who has dedicated 25 years or more to creating art. The award is made possible by a generous gift to the Artist Trust Endowment Fund by the Irving and Yvonne Twining Humber Fund for Artistic Excellence. Learn more about the life and legacy of Yvonne Twining Humber here.
Founded in 2016 by Seattle artist Ginny Ruffner and funded by her friends’ generous contributions, the SOLA (Support Old Lady Artist) Awards are four unrestricted awards of $5,000 given annually to Washington State female-identified visual artists, age 60 or over, who have dedicated 25 years or more to creating art.
These awards recognize artistic excellence, professional accomplishment, and longstanding dedication to the visual arts. Read more about the SOLA organization and their work at solaseattle.org!
In collaboration with Ginny Ruffner, last year we were proud to offer four unrestricted grants of $5,000, an increase from three grants of $3,000 in years past! This increase includes an award that honors a Black, Indigenous, and person of color (BIPOC) artist, which is part of an overall strategy to reverse historic inequities in Artist Trust’s funding programs and move resources to Washington State communities without access to other funding for individual artists.
Read more about the recipients and full lists of the recipients and panelists below:
2023 Twining Humber Award Recipient
Terry Furchgott, King County
2023 SOLA Awards Recipients
Ann Reid, Skagit County
Blanca Santander, King County
René Westbrook, Thurston County
Linda Wolf, Kitsap County
2023 Twining Humber & SOLA Awards Panelists
Tip Toland, Pierce County
Brenetta Ward, King County
Elizabeth Montes de Oca, Yakima County
Terry Furchgott, 2023 Twining Humber Award Recipient
Born in 1948, Terry Furchgott moved to England after college to paint and illustrate children’s books. In 1977 she undertook an epic journey to the Far East and India, sketching her way through multiple cultures before settling in Seattle with her husband and 3 children. There in 1988 she began her long affiliation with the Harris Harvey Gallery where she continues to exhibit her work.
Furchgott is primarily a figurative painter and colorist. She often uses decorative borders to expand the narrative, and to suggest a world of coexisting interior and exterior realities in the psychic as well as the physical world. Thematically, Furchgott’s paintings have always explored her experience of being a woman in this culture. The nature and power of the Feminine and the ability of women to perceive and ground the Divine in their everyday lives is at the heart of her work.
A Core Instructor at the Gage Academy for over 35 years, she has taught and fostered the creativity of hundreds of students and emerging artists. Active in the field of Public Art, Furchgott has completed multiple commissions celebrating the cultural diversity of communities throughout the Pacific Northwest and Alaska. Furchgott has received Individual Artist Awards and Fellowships from the Washington State Arts Commission, the King County Arts Commission, and Artist Trust. Her work is represented in the collections of the WSAC, Microsoft, the Seattle Center, the UWMC, McDonald’s, the United States Postal Service, plus in many hospitals, schools, and public buildings.
Ann Reid, 2023 SOLA Award Recipient
Originally from Eastern Washington, Ann now lives on the peninsula of Samish Island in rural Skagit County. She is inspired by this rural landscape wedged between the Cascade Mountains and the Salish Sea. Her hand-cut paper artworks reflect an interest in environmental challenges to native habitats in this intertidal region and across the Northwest.
After completing graduate courses at Washington State University and receiving a MA from Eastern Washington University she joined the tenured faculty in the art department at Skagit Valley College in 1986. Since retiring from teaching in 2008 she has worked full time in her studio, exhibiting throughout Washington, Idaho, Oregon and California and she is a member of Northwest Designer Craftartists and Earth Creative. Ann also served on the Boards of the Anacortes Arts Festival and Anchor Art Space and as a member of the Education Committee for the Museum of Northwest Art. She also participates as a citizen scientist surveying beach debris for COASST (Coastal Observation and Seabird Survey Team) and monitoring Great Blue Heron for the Skagit County Heron Foraging Study.
She received an Artist Trust GAP grant in 2010 and attended the Brush Creek Ranch Residency in Wyoming in 2017. Her work can be seen in the collections of Kent City Hall, Kent, WA, Island Hospital in Anacortes WA, Skagit Regional Clinics, Mount Vernon WA, and the King County Public Art Collection.
Blanca Santander, 2023 SOLA Award Recipient
Blanca Santander is a Seattle visual artist who immigrated from Lima, Peru, where she received her degree in fine arts. She has received many awards and grants, both national and local, during her years here in the Pacific Northwest. In Peru, Blanca worked with international non-profits, illustrating and doing graphic design for educational materials that would be given to impoverished families. These materials were guides on how to survive in their environment, and to utilize the local ecosystem without damaging it permanently.
These non-profit operations were in remote places where Shining Path terrorists were most active. After surviving capture by terrorists, she finally decided to immigrate to the United States, choosing to live in Seattle, Washington. There, she reestablished her career, exhibiting her art in various venues, acting as curator several times for the Latino art community, teaching as an artist in residence in different schools across the city, and working with the City of Seattle, 4Culture, and other non-profits both local and national on different projects involving public art and teaching art.
Blanca’s artwork is deeply inspired by nature, feminine imagery and concepts, and Latin American cultures. In recent years she has been proud to have permanent installations in public spaces, working to contribute to communities through her artwork. Blanca also considers herself an artivist, often displaying themes of social and environmental justice in her artwork.
René Westbrook, 2023 SOLA Award Recipient
René has worked as a multimedia artist for five decades. A graduate of Boston’s Massachusetts College of Art, René has gone on to become an award winning recipient in sculpture, painting, and photography. Her most recent awards include the SOLA Award, 2023 Artist Trust; Olympia Traffic box art selection, 2023; Artist Trust GAP, 2022; ArtsWalk, 2022; and Jordan Schnitzer art grant, 2020.
René has been selected as an artist in residence at several notable art centers, including AAMARP-African American Master Artist in Residence Program at Northeastern University in Boston, and Artists in Residence for California Council of Arts. Rene’s artwork has been in the permanent collection at the Museum, National Center for African American Artists, Boston, where she has been in group and solo shows. Her work has been shown in Massachusetts Masters at Boston Museum of Fine Arts and more recently at Museum of Art, Pullman, 2021. René’s artwork is in public institutions; Kaiser Permanente, California; and Seattle Children’s Hospital-Brown clinic in Seattle, Washington.
As an eclectic artist, René seeks to engage the viewer as a visual Oracle of creative ideas that stimulates the senses and becomes the vehicle to hidden mysteries she wants to explore. To this end, painting, collage, and photography work as a catalyst to a new direction of inquiry for her digital compilations. René skillfully reinvents her original work and redefines them through a rupture of color and content. These exciting new images present a shift in how far the current work can ascend.
Linda Wolf, 2023 SOLA Award Recipient
Linda Wolf was born in Los Angeles in 1950 smack dab in time for the 1960s cultural revolution. At nineteen, she became one of the first female rock ‘n’ roll photographers. After traveling on tour with Joe Cocker Mad Dogs & Englishmen, Linda left the US to live and study in France. Returning five years later, she began a series of public art murals sponsored by Kodak.
Linda is an award-winning multi-disciplinary artist — a humanistic photographer, author, musician, feminist, activist, memoirist, and devoted daughter, mother, grandmother, wife, and friend. She was the founder/ED of two nonprofit organizations for girls, a workshop leader, fundraiser, and advocate. What unites all this is her deep love of life, nature, people, and a life-long commitment to social justice.
Over her fifty years as an artist, Linda Wolf has moved seamlessly between rock ‘n’ roll, photojournalism, fine art, public art, street, documentary, and portrait photography. Her work is part of numerous documentary movies, books, and art collections in institutions, libraries, and museums worldwide, including Le Bibliotheque Nationale, the Norton Simon Museum, le Musee Reattu, and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
Linda co-founded Women in Photography International along with Carrie Mae Weems, The Daughters-Sisters Project, and Teen Talking Circles. She has authored seven published books, fundraised hundreds of thousands of dollars for humanitarian projects, taught and traveled widely as an artist, and produced and facilitated women’s empowerment retreats. Her latest book, Tribute: Cocker Power, distributed by Simon & Schuster, was released in 2020.
2023 RecipientsGrantsSOLAThaTwining Humber
