2014 McKnight Visual Artist Fellowship Recipients Announced

The Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD) and The McKnight Foundation are proud to announce the eight recipients of the 2014/15 McKnight Artist Fellowships for Visual Artists: David Bowen of Duluth, Sam Gould, Alexa Horochowski, Michael Hoyt, Alison Malone, Lamar Peterson, Joe Smith, and Tetsuya Yamada, all of the Twin Cities.

Designed to identify and support outstanding mid-career Minnesota artists, the McKnight Artist Fellowships for Visual Artists provide recipients with $25,000 stipends, public recognition, professional encouragement from national visiting critics, an individual artist book, and an opportunity to participate in a speaker series. The fellowships are funded by a generous grant from The McKnight Foundation and administered by MCAD.

The 2014 McKnight fellows were selected from a group of 271 applicants by a panel of arts professionals of varying backgrounds whose careers intersect with the visual arts in different ways. This year’s jurors were Xandra Eden, curator of exhibitions at the Weatherspoon Art Museum at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro; Hesse McGraw, vice-president of exhibitions and public programs at the San Francisco Art Institute; and Deborah Willis, a practicing artist and professor and chair of the Department of Photography & Imaging at the Tisch Center for the Arts at New York University.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

David Bowen is a studio artist and educator whose work has been featured in numerous group and solo exhibitions nationally and internationally. Bowen’s work is concerned with aesthetics that result from interactive, reactive and generative processes as they relate to intersections between natural and mechanical systems. Bowen received his BFA from the Herron School of Art and Design, Indianapolis, and his MFA from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. He is currently an associate professor of sculpture and physical computing at the University of Minnesota, Duluth.

Sam Gould—writer, publisher, facilitator, educator/student—is the co-founder and lead instigator of Red76. He is the editor and designer of the group's on-going publication project Journal of Radical Shimming. Gould has taught at the California College of the Arts in the Graduate Department's Social Practice area and within the Text and Image Arts Department of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. He has written as well as lectured extensively within the United States and abroad on issues of sociality, education, and encountering the political within daily life. Gould is currently at work on a book in conversation form with artist/educator Douglas Ashford to be published in the Between Artists series by Artist Resource Transfer Press in late 2014. 

Alexa Horochowski uses a range of elemental media to render sculptures that defy their native qualities. Natural objects and flotsam/garbage combine with studio-generated objects to suggest a post-human natural history of the future. Sculpture, video, and large-scale digital prints also explore the human drive to create lasting symbols of culture and nature’s indifferent, persistent erasure of these symbols. Horochowski has exhibited work nationally and internationally as well as participated in artist residencies in Chile and Argentina. She has been the recipient of a Bush Foundation Fellowship, a McKnight Artist Fellowship for Visual Artists, a Jerome Foundation Fellowship for Emerging Artists, and two Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grants. She received her MFA from the University of Michigan as well as a BA and BJ at the University of Missouri. Horochowski is a professor of sculpture at St. Cloud State University, Minnesota.

Michael Hoyt has been producing, managing, and directing arts-based community development projects and youth development programs for nearly twenty years.  Although his formal training is in painting and drawing, his work has evolved to take the form of interactive sculptural installations and situations in which public participation is a key component. Creating and facilitating unique shared experiences that connect diverse and often non-traditional art audiences drive his art practice. Hoyt’s work has been exhibited in traditional and nontraditional venues locally and abroad. A graduate of the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, he has received awards from the Minnesota State Arts Board, a Jerome Foundation Fellowship for Emerging Artists, and a Northern Lights Art(ists) on the Verge Fellowship.

Alison Malone is a photographer who uses both audio and visual documentation to explore subcultures that are overlooked and often misunderstood in American society. Her current body of work, The Daughters of Job, portrays a secret society of girls who range from 10 to 20 years of age who are daughters and granddaughters of Freemasons. Malone has exhibited nationally and internationally and received numerous grants, scholarships and awards including: the Paula H. Rhodes Memorial Award, a MJR Film Grant, and a Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grant. She has been published in American Photography 24, The Collector’s Guide to Emerging Art Photography, Yvi Magazine, Esquire Russia, META magazine Germany, and various online journals. She has an MFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York and a BFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.

Lamar Peterson creates graphic portraits of an irrational world where happy characters are resolutely accepting of grotesque misfortune. The plague of absurdities presented in his work is rooted in popular culture as much as it is in old-hat surrealism. Issues of race, community, and social and economic upheaval are candy-colored and darkly comic. Peterson received a BS from Florida A&M University in Tallahassee and an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence. Selected solo exhibitions include Deitch Projects in New York and Richard Heller Gallery in Los Angeles. He is represented by Fredericks & Freiser Gallery in New York and is an assistant professor of drawing and painting at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.

Joe Smith's abstractions and still-lifes explore the impact of weight and gesture as a means to open up psychological spaces. Each element in his work is charged with restraining and driving forces that reveal the gaps between the physical, mental, and the metaphysical. A graduate of Cranbrook Academy of Art, Smith has received several grants and fellowships, including a McKnight Artist Fellowship for Visual Artists, a Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grant, and a Jerome Foundation Travel Grant. He has exhibited in numerous venues, including Midway Contemporary Art, Occasional Art, and David Petersen Gallery in the Twin Cities, and The Suburban in Chicago. He is currently a professor of art at the University of Northwestern-St. Paul.

Tetsuya Yamada works with a wide variety of media including clay, the material that roots him. By paying attention to the great potential within simple objects, their shape, and how they act and are acted upon, Yamada’s work integrates the mind's imaginative and creative potential with the mundane acts of ordinary life. He is the Grand Prize winner of the 2011 Gyeonggi International Ceramic Biennale, South Korea, and the recipient of a 2005 McKnight Artist Fellowship for Ceramic Artists and a 2001 Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Biennial Competition Award.  Originally from Tokyo, Yamada has a BFA from Tamagawa University, Tokyo, and MFA from Alfred University, New York. He is currently an associate professor of art at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.

ABOUT THE McKNIGHT ARTIST FELLOWSHIPS

The McKnight Artist Fellowship program is one of the oldest and largest of its kind in the country. Established in 1981, the fellowship program provides annual, unrestricted cash awards to outstanding mid-career Minnesota artists in eleven areas, totaling nearly $1 million each year. Non-profit arts organizations oversee the administration of the fellowships and structure their own programs to respond to the unique opportunities and challenges of different creative disciplines.

ABOUT THE McKNIGHT FOUNDATION

The McKnight Foundation seeks to improve the quality of life for present and future generations through grant-making, coalition-building, and the encouragement of strategic policy reform. Founded in 1953 and independently endowed by William and Maude McKnight, the Minnesota-based foundation had assets of approximately $1.9 billion and granted about $91 million in 2011.

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.