The George Kaiser Family Foundation has announced the 12 artists who will comprise the Tulsa Artist Fellowship’s (TAF) inaugural class. Hailing from nine different states, the class includes artists specializing in weaving, sculpting, installations, painting and public art. Possessing a wide variety of experiences and talents, the fellows will be immersed into the local art scene through gallery shows, community-wide art festivals and First Friday Art Crawls.
The George Kaiser Family Foundation has announced the 12 artists who will comprise the Tulsa Artist Fellowship’s (TAF) inaugural class. Hailing from nine different states, the class includes artists specializing in weaving, sculpting, installations, painting and public art. Possessing a wide variety of experiences and talents, the fellows will be immersed into the local art scene through gallery shows, community-wide art festivals and First Friday Art Crawls.
“We couldn’t be more pleased with the high-level of talent and diversity this group of artists has to offer,” said Stanton Doyle, senior program officer at George Kaiser Family Foundation. “The TAF selection panelists had a tough job and they approached it very carefully and deliberately. In our inaugural year, to have more than 300 applicants is truly remarkable. We can’t wait to get the 12 selected artists to Tulsa and involved with the art community.”
A Tulsa-based artist recruitment and retention program, TAF offers a generous package to early- and mid-career artists. The selected artists will receive a stipend ranging from $15,000 to $40,000 and, in most cases, free housing and studio work space. The program seeks talented and diverse voices to support Tulsa’s expanding arts scene. The fellowship will begin on January 4, 2016.
The inaugural class of fellows includes:
Crystal Z. Campbell – Oklahoma City/Amsterdam: Crystal Z. Campbell is a mixed-media artist of Filipino, Chinese and African-American descent. Since 2011, Campbell has had 10 solo exhibits around the globe, and group exhibitions at Studio Museum of Harlem, ICA-Philadelphia, and de Appel Arts Centre. The recipient of numerous awards, Campbell was most recently awarded the Mondriaan Fonds Development Award for Professional Artists in 2014, after completing the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten. Campbell has a Master of Fine Art from the University of California-San Diego and was a Van Lier Fellow at Whitney Independent Study Program at the Museum of American Art in New York.
Alice Leora Briggs – Lubbock, Texas: Alice Leor Briggs is a draftsman and printmaker who also creates in situ architectural installations from metal and wood. Her work has been featured in over 40 solo exhibitions across the country and she has also collaborated on more than five publications as author and/or artist. In 2011, Briggs was appointed as a Fulbright Scholar at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava, Slovak Republic where she further enhanced her skills as a printmaker. Other awards include a Project Grant from Arizona Commission on the Arts and a Fellowship from the Utah Arts Council.
Molly Dilworth – Brooklyn, New York: Molly Dilworth is an award-winning artist who views creative practices as a form of research. Specializing in public art, she has partnered with green building community organizations, climate change activists, art organizations and government agencies to make public pieces addressing our relationship to labor, ethics, history, nature and technology. Her work has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Huffington Post and Wired Magazine among other national outlets. She has exhibited nationally and internationally, and has been awarded public commissions in many cities including Denver, Seattle, Portland and New York.
Rafael Domenech – Miami, Florida: Rafael Domenech is an artist who focuses on the history of places and its connection to the place in his art. Comfortable working with multiple materials on different scales, he aims to create a connection between geographical locations and their social history through large-scale installations. Rafael’s work has resulted in five solo exhibitions and seven group exhibitions, along with several collections. He was also the recipient of the Wolfson Family Scholarship in 2012.
Akiko Jackson – San Francisco, California: Akiko Jackson is a visual artist with an emphasis on creating sculptures and installations. She selects specific materials, often affordable and discarded, with the intent of using the materials to further enhance a nostalgic cultural reference in each installation. She has participated in seven previous fellowship and artist in residence programs from Massachusetts to Seattle further honing her practice. In addition to receiving multiple awards and exhibiting across the country, Jackson has extensive experience as both an instructor and visiting artist at a variety of universities and art institutes including the Kansas City Art Institute, University of Arkansas and Virginia Commonwealth University.
Gary Kachadourian – Baltimore, Maryland: Gary Kachadourian is a visual artist who specializes in drawing. With an emphasis on creating scale drawings from objects, surfaces and locations that exist in public or personal space, he draws selected scenes and then adjusts the pieces to scale for book, poster or room covering form. He is also an adjunct professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and has participated in more than 20 exhibitions and 10 curatorial projects.
Marlowe Katoney – Winslow, Arizona: Marlowe Katoney is a Navajo weaver. An active presenter, Katoney has demonstrated and presented on the art of weaving at multiple museums and conferences across the Southwest and has received honorable mention at the Museum of Northern Arizona Navajo Show for three consecutive years. Earlier this year, he was named the Rollin and Mary Ella King Fellow by the School for Advanced Research.
Monty Little – Santa Fe, New Mexico: Monty Little is a painter who has exhibited in a diverse array of galleries and received numerous awards for his talents in painting, mixed media and printmaking. His achievements include being named the 2015 recipient of the SITE Scholar Program and multiple publications in the Tribal College Journal, Institute of American Indian Arts and Design Wave: The Function of Art. Little earned dual bachelor degrees in creative writing in poetry and studio arts in printmaking and painting from the Institute of American Indian Arts.
Clarissa Rizal – Juneau, Alaska: Clarissa Rizal is a full-time multi-media artist, instructor, cultural facilitator and lecturer. As owner of Clarissa Rizal, LLC, she designs and implements traditional and contemporary art for tribes, collectors, private institutions, business, museums and galleries. As a founding board member of Artstream Alaska, Rizal has produced many events including the Dance Regalia Documentary Project, North Coast Artists’ Gathering, Northwest Coast Mentorship Program and a series of Whistlepig House Concerts.
Eric Sall – Roswell, New Mexico: Eric Sall is a painter influenced by various forms and modes of abstraction. The recipient of multiple grants, awards and residencies, he recently completed a major artwork for the Richard Bolling Federal Building in Kansas City commissioned by the U.S. General Services Administration's Art in Architecture Program. Sall attended the Yale Summer School of Music and Art, received his bachelor’s degree from the Kansas City Art Institute and his masters from Virginia Commonwealth University.
Nick Vaughan – Brooklyn, New York: Nick Vaughan brings an extensive background in scenography for opera, dance and experimental theater. Vaughan graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with a bachelor’s degree in theatrical design and will bring his many talents to Tulsa with a focus on installations. He and his partner, Jake Margolin, are recipients of the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship and a 2013 MAP Fund Grant. He is a member of the TEAM, a collaborative devised theater company that has won numerous awards, including the American Theatre Wing’s 2014 National Theatre Company Grant. With four solo shows under their belts, their fifth show, “50 States: Texas-Oklahoma-Colorado,” is slated to open in 2016.
Nathan Young – Tulsa, Oklahoma: Nathan Young is an American Indian conceptual artists who works across multiple mediums including sound, composition, video, performance and installation. Young has been displayed around the globe on many occasions in both solo and group exhibitions with his most recent international exhibit taking place in Canada in 2014. Young has his Master of Fine Arts from Bard College and a bachelor’s degree in art history from the University of Oklahoma.
"The TAF selection panel, which includes expert art historians, curators and artists, made their decisions after a thorough and rigorous process,” said Julia Kirt, executive director at Oklahomans for the Arts and TAF committee member. “The panel agonized to ensure the class consisted of the highest caliber of artists who would also be a good fit for the community. The selected artists possess a diverse set of talents and will only enrich the local art scene."
The seven member selection panel includes Tom Borrup, Dr. Lara Evans, Gloria Groom, Dr. Sylvester Ogbechie, Jennifer Scanlan, Raechell Smith and Hamza Walker. Their combined expertise is extensive and represents a broad range of exposure to all kinds of contemporary gallery- and public-oriented visual art.
To learn more about the TAF or to apply, visit www.gkff.org/taf
