2012/13 Jerome Fellowship Exhibition

Minneapolis, MN—The Minneapolis College of Art and Design and the Jerome Foundation are pleased to present an exhibition of new work by recipients of the 2012/13 Jerome Foundation Fellowships for Emerging Artists: Susannah Bielak, Amanda Hankerson, Michael Hoyt, Melissa Loop, and Lauren Roche.

INFORMATION PANEL

ABOUT THE ARTISTS AND EXHIBITION

Susannah Bielak’s Vientos is a campaign of projects using the wind as a metaphor for resilience, the mechanics of failure, and rendering the ineffable. Expanding upon a prior investigation of the rapport between domestic life and natural disaster, Vientos will intercut performative actions staged with dancers and others (e.g., rodeo cowboys, wind engineers) on frozen lakes and in industrial non-spaces, wind tunnels, photo studios, and a gigantic research center. These actions employ handmade props designed for resistance and failure, such as drawings on paper—created with the artist’s own breath and referencing wind-torn concrete structures—that serve both as armor for fighting wind devices and as sculptural “ventifacts” that accompany the videos in which they are featured.

Amanda Hankerson's portrait project explores connections among the small number of living people (a few thousand) who share her last name. Using photography and social media, Hankerson examines the notion of family with Americans who have vastly different histories in this once slave-holding nation, spanning 260 years.

Michael Hoyt will be exhibiting a series of hand-painted portraits alongside a mobile drawing station called One Another that engages strangers in a chance art exchange at parks, basketball courts, and soccer fields. Designed to focus time and space through the intimate experience of sitting for a portrait, the process creates a unique opportunity for connection between two individuals (the artist and the sitter).

Melissa Loop will be presenting a large-scale landscape painting based on a valley she visited on the Marquesan island on Nuku Hiva. Employing photographs and memory, she is creating a non-existent view in an impossible space. The painting invokes the grandeur of historical landscape painting while exploring the fragmented and nostalgic ideas of place. The piece is part of a larger project that confronts the fantasy and reality of the exotic and the ways in which tourism and cultural stereotypes shape cultural preservation and identity.

Lauren Roche has been working on a series of drawn and painted portraits of women. Though similar in scale and subject—the women are paired with their pets or demons—the portraits uniquely communicate the individual sitter’s hidden mannerisms and vulnerabilities. Using varnish, acrylic, and sometimes bleach to sculpt a drawing, Roche chooses materials whose immediacy and rawness add to the forcefulness of each individual piece.

Exhibition Catalog

• 2012/13 Jerome Foundation Fellowships Exhibition catalog (PDF)

ABOUT THE JEROME FOUNDATION FELLOWSHIPS FOR EMERGING ARTISTS
 

These Jerome fellows were selected out of a field of 245 applicants by a panel of three arts professionals. The jurors were Miranda Lash, curator of modern and contemporary art at the New Orleans Museum of Art, Shirley Tse, artist and professor at California Institute of Arts, and Jill Ewald, director of the Flaten Art Museum at St. Olaf College.

In addition to receiving $10,000 each, over this past year the fellows had the opportunity to host studio visits with local and national art critics and curators. Jay Gabler, arts editor of the Twin Cities Daily Planet, was selected as the local guest critic who has also written essays about each of the fellows. In October Toby Kamps, curator at the Menil Collection in Houston will meet with all of the fellows. Other visiting critics include Naomi Beckwith, Clara Kim, Christina Schmid, and Marcus Young.
Since 1981 the Jerome Foundation has generously funded these fellowships for emerging artists, which are designed to identify and support outstanding artists in the state of Minnesota at the early stages of their professional careers. Over the past 30 years over 150 artists have benefited from this fellowship program. The fellowship program is administered by the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.

ABOUT THE JEROME FOUNDATION

The Jerome Foundation, created by artist and philanthropist Jerome Hill (1905–1972), seeks to contribute to a dynamic and evolving culture by supporting the creation, development, and production of new works by emerging artists. The Foundation makes grants to not-for-profit organizations and individual artists living in the state of Minnesota and the five boroughs of New York City.

ABOUT THE MINNEAPOLIS COLLEGE OF ART AND DESIGN

Recognized nationally and internationally for its innovative and interdisciplinary approaches to visual arts education, the Minneapolis College of Art and Design is home to more than 700 students and offers professional certificates, bachelor of fine arts and bachelor of science degrees, and graduate degrees.