$60,000 awarded to 11 Washington State visual artists!

We are thrilled to name Esther Ervin as the 2026 recipient of the Twining Humber Lifetime Achievement Award alongside Holly Ballard Martz, Nancy Burgess, Ellen Garvens, Bonnie Hopper, Cheryll Leo-Gwin, Carol Milne, Kathy Ross, Ellen Sollod, Charlene Teters, and Suze Woolf as the 2026 SOLA Awards recipients!

This year, thanks to the extraordinary generosity of Marjorie Levy, Artist Trust and SOLA doubled support for Washington State artists from five to ten unrestricted SOLA awards, increasing total funding by $25,000 and honoring even more of the incredible, enduring talent in our region!

We are thrilled to celebrate this year’s Twining Humber and SOLA Award recipients and to recognize artists whose decades of dedication have enriched Washington State’s cultural landscape.

About the SOLA Awards

Founded in 2016 by Seattle artist Ginny Ruffner and Marjorie (Marge) Levy, the SOLA (Support of Old Lady Artists) Awards are unrestricted awards of $5,000 given annually to women visual artists in Washington State, age 60 and older, who have dedicated 25 years or more to their artistic practice. 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.

2026 Twining Humber & SOLA Awards Panelists

Tatiana Garmendia, Snohomish County
Ellen George, Clark County
Selene Stantucci, Whitman County

Esther Ervin, photo: Kai Watson

Esther Ervin, Bondage, clothes pins, copper, steel findings, bone, beads, 15″ x 5.5″ x 0.375″, 2017

Esther Ervin, 2026 Twining Humber Award Recipient

Esther Ervin is an interdisciplinary visual artist originally from Somerville, New Jersey. Her practice centers on book arts and mixed-media work exploring themes of environment, politics, and abstraction. Alongside her studio practice, she is actively engaged in curatorial and community arts initiatives, including the Garfield Super Block and the Black Arts West Alumni Association. Throughout her career, Esther has curated numerous exhibitions, served on selection panels, created public art installations, and presented six solo exhibitions, most recently at the Elizabeth C. Miller Library at the UW Center for Urban Horticulture.

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Holly Ballard Martz, photo: Steven Miller

Holly Ballard Martz, Eve (BANISHED); vintage quilt, glass seed beads, thread, hardware; 49″ x 12.5″ x 12.5″; 2025. Photo: Steven Miller

Holly Ballard Martz, 2026 SOLA Award Recipient

Holly Ballard Martz is a multidisciplinary artist whose sculptural and installation-based work bridges conceptual inquiry with a deep reverence for craft. Known for her meticulous fabrication and material sensitivity, Martz transforms familiar objects—textiles, domestic tools, vintage ephemera—into intricately constructed pieces that challenge cultural norms and power structures. Her practice honors traditional craft techniques while subverting their historical associations, using embellishment, repetition, and precision to explore themes such as gender roles, reproductive justice, and gun violence. By embedding provocative content within beautifully crafted surfaces, Martz invites viewers to engage with difficult subject matter through the lens of material beauty.

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Nancy Burgess

Nancy Burgess, Collection of Baskets, Ceremonial Spruce Root Hat, Spruce Root Headband (detail), 1993

Nancy Burgess, 2026 SOLA Award Recipient

Nancy Burgess is a Dakota/Umpqua(Grand Ronde) weaver, born in Seattle and based in Tacoma. She is a weaver of cedar bark and spruce root hats and baskets for forty years. Nancy was taught by her sister in law, Vicki LeCornu, and later had instruction from Delores Churchill. She has taught many relatives and friends to weave throughout the years and is very proud of her children for carrying on the tradition. Her work is in galleries and museums from Anchorage, Alaska to Grand Ronde, Oregon and to many collectors from around the world.

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Ellen Garvens

Ellen Garvens, Calder Drop, Archival Ink Jet print, dimensions variable, 2025

Ellen Garvens, 2026 SOLA Award Recipient

Ellen Garvens’ mixed media work explores crossovers between drawing, photography, and sculpture. Her work has been featured in numerous collections, including Henry Art Gallery, The New Mexico Art Museum, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, The Tacoma Art Museum, Allen Memorial Art Museum Oberlin College OH, the Yale University Art Gallery, and Cornell Museum of Art at Rowlins College, FL among others. Ellen recently retired after 29 years as a Professor of Art in the Photo/Media program at University of Washington, Seattle.
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Bonnie Hopper

Bonnie Hopper, Mother and Child (detail), large scale collage on yupo paper, oil paint/oil stick, mosaic tile with resin overlay, 48x36x1 hardboard, 2024

Bonnie Hopper, 2026 SOLA Award Recipient

Bonnie Hopper is a Seattle-based visual artist whose career spans over three decades of creative exploration. Her signature style—a vibrant fusion of oil paint and collage on Yupo finished with a high-gloss resin—investigates the intersections of African American history, jazz, and the intimate rhythms of her upbringing as one of thirteen children. Hopper’s work has been featured in prominent regional institutions, including the Museum of History & Industry (MOHAI) and the Seattle Art Fair. Represented by Gallery 110, Hopper remains a vital voice in the Pacific Northwest, dedicated to preserving cultural narratives through tactile, luminous storytelling.

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Cheryll Leo-Gwin

Cheryll Leo-Gwin, Eureka! Chinatown (detail), digital collage on archival paper, 36″ x 48″, 2024, photo: courtesy of the artist

Cheryll Leo-Gwin, 2026 SOLA Award Recipient

Born in Canada during the Chinese Exclusion Acts, Cheryll Leo-Gwin was denied U.S. citizenship until after WWII and faced significant discrimination prior to the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Armed with a University of Washington MFA, she taught at multiple universities, worked as a Bellevue College arts administrator, and organized U.S.-China cultural exchanges. Her multi-media artwork has been exhibited in the U.S., China, and the UK. Leo-Gwin’s recent work includes her 2025 podcast, Lost Underground, and an upcoming visual podcast docudrama combining archaeological findings with poetry and digital visuals. Her decorated career includes grants from Arts WA, Artist Trust, 4Culture, and the Ford Foundation.

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Carol Milne

Carol Milne, Watershed, kiln cast glass, knitting needles & brass ends, 15 x 18 x 9 inches, 2026

Carol Milne, 2026 SOLA Award Recipient

Carol Milne’s artwork occupies a rare intersection between craft and fine art. Her sculptures challenge assumptions about material, permanence, and process, inviting viewers to reconsider the relationship between delicacy and strength. Since developing her knitted glass process in 2006, Milne has exhibited widely throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia. She has had solo exhibitions in Seattle, New York City, Asheville, and Belgium, and her work can be found in museum collections in the US, Japan, Turkey, Belgium, France and Germany. This year her work will be in the Glass Art Society’s 2026 Member exhibition in the United Kingdom.

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Kathy Ross

Kathy Ross, Musical Chairs with Enough Chairs, tin, 40″ x 38″ x 12″, 2022

Kathy Ross, 2026 SOLA Award Recipient

Kathy Ross uses found materials in her work, usually tin, and will never be a less-is-more type. Themes are political, hilarious, narrative, eccentric, psychological. Always a backstory. Relentlessly detailed and over the top. To Kathy, art is personal. It’s all blood and guts underneath. She makes art out of what worries her, what makes her laugh, what scares her, what pisses her off. Nothing is off limits. If it’s there, it can be art. Kathy is a self-taught, self-employed, full time studio artist since 1978. She has exhibited in shops, art festivals, and solo and group shows in galleries and art museums.

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Ellen Sollod

Ellen Sollod, Scavengings, archival pigment print/scanography, 19″ x 13″, 2019

Ellen Sollod, 2026 SOLA Award Recipient

Ellen Sollod views her art as a way to marry her passion for visual expression with her commitment to helping to build a more just society. Her public art is sited throughout the PNW and her artworks are in university and museum collections across the US, including Museum of NW Art, Hallie Ford Museum, National Museum of Women in the Arts, NY Public Library Spencer Collection, Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, Pacific NW Photographers Archive, and more. She has been awarded grants by 4Culture and the Seattle Office of Art and Culture and artist residencies at Ucross, Playa, Brush Creek Arts Foundation, Centrum, and the Northwest Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies in Italy.

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Charlene Teters

Charlene Teters, Just Say No to Red Sambo

Charlene Teters, 2026 SOLA Award Recipient

Charlene Teters is a Spokane Nation artist, educator and activist whose work blends conceptual installation art with anti-racist advocacy. Early in her career as a Universally of Illinois graduate student, Teters led campus protest against the University’s use of the “Chief Illiniwek” mascot, actions that drew national attention and became the subject of Jay Rosenstein’s documentary In Whose Honor? (1997) Her art installations and paintings explicitly critique harmful Native stereotypes. Teters contributions have been recognized by art and advocacy organizations and her work is held in public collections including the Museum of Contemporary Native Art, and New Mexico Museum of Fine Arts and private collections.

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Suze Woolf

Suze Woolf, Goodell Creek Cedar, varnished watercolor on shaped board, 52″ x 43″ x 2″, 2019

Suze Woolf, 2026 SOLA Award Recipient

Suze Woolf studied ceramics and printmaking at the University of Washington. An early adopter of computer graphics, her career has also included print and interface design. Though known as a watercolorist, she explores a wide range of media from painting, paper-casting, artist books and pyrography to installation—sometimes all together. She has exhibited throughout the Pacific Northwest and across the US and parts of Canada. Her work is in museums, public and many private collections. She has curated a large travelling exhibit, juried competitions for municipalities and artist organizations, and contributed work to non-profit fundraising. An installation of her burned tree portraits has toured since 2019.

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The SOLA Awards are presented in partnership with solaseattle.org.