ANNOUNCING

Artist Professional Development Grants | Round 24 Recipients

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Great Meadows Foundation is pleased to announce the award of 14 grants to artists in the Kentucky region through the 24th round of the Artist Professional Development Grants program. These grants will enable recipients to travel to visit major exhibitions, conferences, and artist residencies, and connect with other professionals in the field whose expertise can help them develop their critical practice.

Learn more about the Round 24 Grant Recipients and their upcoming travels below.

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Tiffany Calvert

She / Her
www.tiffanycalvert.com
@tccal
Louisville, KY

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Where will you be traveling?
New York City, NY

What will you be traveling for?
I’ll be viewing current exhibitions including HAROLD COHEN: AARON at the Whitney Museum. I have been working with artificial intelligence in my work since early 2020; the Whitney exhibition documents Cohen’s AARON, the earliest artificial intelligence (AI) program for artmaking developed in the early 1970’s. 

Can you give a short summary of your art practice?
My paintings combine diverse technologies, including fresco, 3D modeling, and data manipulation – exploring all these mediums as technologies. My recent work utilizes image generating machine learning models trained on Dutch and Flemish still life paintings to create new invented images, which I print at large scale. The AI  generates forms reminiscent of still life, but distorted and unexpected. Using stencils to protect parts of the printed images, I paint onto them. These masks create hard edges where paint meets reproduction.The end result are paintings which meld the tangibility of gestural paint with digital aesthetic, and whose distortions and abstraction point to the pitfalls of AI.

What are some of the inspirations for your practice?
I am as much inspired by historical painting traditions as I am new media, photography and media theory. 

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Jonathan Cherry

He / Him
www.jonpcherry.com
@jonpcherry
Louisville, KY (From Fort Liberty, North Carolina)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Where will you be traveling?
Perpignan, France & Venice, Italy

What will you be traveling for?
I will be visiting Perpignan for Visa Pour l’Image, a international photojournalism festival during professionals week for portfolio reviews, seminars, and networking with colleagues. After that, I will be travelling to Venice for the Biennale. This year’s curation theme is “Foreigners Everywhere”, featuring many works by indigenous and queer artists.  

Can you give a short summary of your art practice?
I am a documentary photographer who focuses on politics and politics and those feeling the effects of said policies. My work brings me into varied spaces involving extremists, blue collar workers, presidents, immigrants, or addicts.

What are some of the inspirations for your practice?
I am greatly influenced by the work of Farm Security Administration photographers from the early 20th century in the US. The documentary practice of mindfully exposing the blindspots of American society to garner change and deeper intimacy inspires my daily research and practice.

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Teri Dryden

She / Her
www.teridryden.com
@drydenteri
Louisville, KY

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Where will you be traveling?
New Orleans, Louisiana

What will you be traveling for?
 I will be in NOLA for KOLAJFEST 2024. This multi-day, immersive festival and symposium presented by Kolaj Magazine, self-described as “a quarterly, printed art magazine reviewing and surveying contemporary collage,” and Kolaj Institute, a Louisiana non-profit art organization that brings artists, curators and writers together to celebrate the medium and its role in art, society and culture. Through panel discussions, artist talks, presentations, exhibitions, films and social activities, I will have many opportunities to network, participate in a community, and exchange ideas that can deepen our understanding of collage as an important and viable artform in the 21st century.

Can you give a short summary of your art practice?
 I create personal histories by recording ideas and concepts through my relationship with various types of paper. My practice is deeply informed by a life-long case of wanderlust and an intense curiosity about places and people and the ways we change each other- an ineffable transfer of experience. A deep interest in Japanese art, thought and philosophy have led me to explore the principles of wabi-sabi, which celebrates what is imperfect, impermanent and incomplete. Moving between intuition and logic, chaos and order, I reunite and record fragments of thoughts, feelings and memories. By creating an ephemeral path between internal experiences and external encounters, I ask: Who am I? Who are we?

What are some of the inspirations for your practice?
I am inspired by the intimate collages and assemblages of Hannelore Baron, the mark making of Cy Twombly and the paintings of Joan Mitchell. Places and nature and the mysteries of life.

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Laurie Fader

She / Her
www.lauriefader.com
@lcfader
Louisville, KY

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Where will you be traveling?
New York City, New York

What will you be traveling for?
I’ll see the Whitney Biennale, a show at MOMA called “Body Constructs” and many gallery shows in the Lower East Side and Chelsea.

Can you give a short summary of your art practice?
Fables, or cautionary tales, with narrative elements embedded in labyrinthian corridors of color, shape and form are woven into my recent work. Early tentative painterly decisions usually include a notion of landscape that will be an expression of the precariousness of our ecosystem. Folkloric parables leverage dystopia with humor to invite the viewer into a comic, macabre Bosch-like world. Ultimately, I hope to find formal resolution that may be irrational, but encapsulates the anxiety and strangeness of living today.

What are some of the inspirations for your practice?
Paul Klee, Moghul paintings, Hokusai, Bruegel, Fra Angelico, Grant Wood, Jimmy Wright, Cycladic Art, Barbara Takenaga

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Crystal Gregory

She / Her
www.crystalgregory.org
@crystalirenegregory
Lexington, KY (From Huntington Beach, CA)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Where will you be traveling?
Mexico City and Oaxaca, Mexico

What will you be traveling for?
A research trip to Mexico will deepen my understanding of color and form in my studio taking inspiration from lineages of natural dye, modern architecture and contemporary art.

Can you give a short summary of your art practice?
The work materializes through a variety of mediums all traced back to the line of a thread. I create handwoven textiles that I pair with architectural materials such as metal and concrete. I collaborate with visual artists and dancers to create installation work, performance and video. I am interested in understanding my studio practice as an object of labor in a constant state of becoming, something that is pliable and alive.

What are some of the inspirations for your practice?
In recent works woven textiles and architecture are explored as they pertain to movement—movement described by and remembered through the outlining material landscape. The movement through a landscape, the pliability of a textile, as well as their gridded systems, are described and explored in relation to social structures of citizenship and intersecting parts of a whole. Ultimately, recognition of these systems as boundaries and edges describes the life within.

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Sean Patrick Hill

He / Him
www.seanpatrickhill.com
@kentuckyfieldguide
Louisville, KY

Where will you be traveling?
Stockholm and Nordingrå, Sweden

What will you be traveling for?
I’m attending a two-week artist residency at the Nordingrå Konstby on the High Coast of Sweden, where I’ll explore the aesthetic approaches to landscape photography in light of Swedish culture and as a collaboration with the poet, Francine Conley. I will also be visiting museums across Sweden, including the Fotografiska, and meeting with curators and other artists.

Can you give a short summary of your art practice?
I am a large and medium-format photographer, working in both panchromatic and color films. I print black and white on gelatin silver paper using traditional darkroom methods, and I print color images as C-prints. My subject matter is varied, but I have an inclination towards landscape photography, often rendered as nonrepresentational or “abstract” images.

What are some of the inspirations for your practice?
I am interested especially in the classic early-to-mid twentieth century photographers, especially those working in more conceptual and abstract images like Brett Weston and Minor White.

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Michael Kopp

He / Him
www.michaelkopp.art
@professir.kopp
Louisville, KY

Where will you be traveling?
Puebla & Mexico City, Mexico

What will you be traveling for?
I will be traveling to Puebla, Mexico for an international artist and residence program through the Arquetopia Foundation. While abroad, I will be mentoring with curator Francisco Guevara and working with 8 other international visual artists throughout the month of May. On my return trip I will spend an extra four days in Mexico City. Here I plan to visit Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo, Museo Jumex Live Forever (For a Moment), The University Museum of Contemporary Art Alexander Apostle solo exhibition, and Laboratorio Arte Alameda.

Can you give a short summary of your art practice?
My practice interrogates the role of “artist as maker” to examine social power structures of images, image making, and image sharing. I am interested in exploring how contemporary imagery operates as a system and the affects this system has on human relationships on an individual and societal level. Employing the conceptual framework of Glitch Theory, I analyze the politics and processes of HIV transmission through production of queer visual and social practice art.

What are some of the inspirations for your practice?
I situate my practice at the intersections of the visual, the social, and the political. I draw inspiration from art critics and theorists Guy Debord, Susan Sontag, Tania Bruguera, Hito Steyrl and Nic Briz.

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Ryan Mahony

He / Him
www.ryanmahony.com
@ryan.mahony
Jeffersonville, Indiana

Where will you be traveling?
Copenhagen, Denmark

What will you be traveling for?
I will be traveling to Denmark to visit the European Ceramic Context 2024, a triennial exhibition of contemporary glass and ceramic. I will also be visiting several museums and institutions throughout Copenhagen.

Can you give a short summary of your art practice?
For the past 15 years, I have dedicated myself to the art of ceramics and sculpture. After an extended period of crafting utilitarian ceramics, I recently shifted my focus toward creating intricate, nonfunctional pieces using a single needle. This particular process has evolved into a meditative practice for me, involving long periods of sitting and working on a single piece. These sessions can last anywhere from 1 to 8 hours, during which I create the same mark repeatedly.

What are some of the inspirations for your practice?
Inspired by artists like Ruth Asawa, Agnes Martin, and Doris Salcedo, I abstract from material and form without imposing an ideological framework. Intrigued by the cumulative effect of repetitive marks and actions, I explore how they coalesce into something greater than their individual parts.

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Doreen Maloney

She / Her
www.doreenmaloney.com
@maloneydoreen
Lexington, KY

Where will you be traveling?
Linz & Vienna, Austria

What will you be traveling for?
My planned activities are to attend the Ars Electronica festival in Linz, Austria. This Festival offers a prize for visionary pioneers of media, AI, VR as well as experimental music and is the longest running and worldwide electronic arts festival of its kind. It takes place 4 – 8th of September, 2024.

Can you give a short summary of your art practice?
My work has been responding the collective calamities of the pandemic and the imposed isolation and illness and the personal and collective loss of loved ones. In response to this heaviness, I have created a series of illuminated paper, suspended installations that strive to breathe, float, and escape the confines of the past darkness from which they appeared. This need for suspension is also present in my newest work, Spirit House, a life-sized shelter constructed from cyanotype sun prints, that hovers and moves while providing a sense of safety.

What are some of the inspirations for your practice?
During my visit to Ars Electronica, I plan to spend one day visiting the memorial at the KZ Gedenkstatte Ebensee. Chiaru Shiota’s has created a large-scale suspended installation at this former concentration camp in Ebensee. I have followed Chiaru Shiota’s career and she is a major influence on me and I am curious to see how she deals with such a difficult topic in her very delicate work.

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Robyn Moore

She / Her
www.robynmoore.com
@deeptimeprojects
Wellington, KY

Where will you be traveling?
Grand Marais Art Colony, Grand Marais Minnesota

What will you be traveling for?
I have been awarded a Juried Artist Residency at Grand Marais Art Colony during May, 2024. I will have 24-hour access to a professional printmaking studio for a period of two weeks and make new work inspired by local landscapes. I look forward to experimenting with large-scale collagraph intaglio plates as well as new approaches to photopolymer gravure. I hope the work that I make post-residency will emerge more expressive, experimental, energetic and, indeed, liberated from the (semi) unconscious conventions that are part of my training in photography.

Can you give a short summary of your art practice?
I am photomedia-based visual artist who explores how alternative and experimental photographic processes can reveal the unseen worlds and beings around us. My current project, Being in the Land, is a series of landscape images created using photopolymer gravure, which is a photo-based intaglio printmaking process. This series explores how such works can materialize the beings and forces that we may sense in the land but, otherwise, would remain unseen. In this series, each image becomes both an experiment in self-portraiture and evocation of the numinous other, more-than-human beings and forces that dwell in the land.

What are some of the inspirations for your practice?
My research interests include deep time, biosemiotics, paleontology, geology, geopoetics, phenomenology, empathic imagining and the ways in which visibly material photographic practices can encourage new ways of seeing, sensing and interacting with other beings and landscapes.

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Rebecca Norton

She / Her
www.rebeccajnorton.com
@rebeccajnortonstudios
Louisville, KY

Where will you be traveling?
Scotland (Perth, Glasgow, Edinburgh) & London

What will you be traveling for?
The primary focus of the trip is the Unicorn Exhibition at the Perth Museum. Attending this exhibition is an opportunity to view historical and contemporary artifacts and artworks depicting Unicorn mythology. My trip will include visits to various arts institutions, collections, and galleries, such as the Gallery of Modern Art in Glasgow, Jupiter Artland, The Tate Museum, National Gallery, and others. I’ll meet individual artists and writers along the way, including painters Maggie Hill (Glasgow) and Chris Cook (London).

Can you give a short summary of your art practice?
My practice is built upon an intrigue with color, curiosity for geometry, and a distinct interest in how we perceive things. I’m interested in depicting progressive movement through the elaboration of color, pattern, and geometric figuration. On a deeper level, my work questions processes that underlie human knowledge construction. To this end, my work probes discourses surrounding perception and sensory experience.

What are some of the inspirations for your practice?
My aesthetic infuses the hard-edge play of Op art with complex figure/ground relations. Think Bridget Riley painting Giacomo Balla’s dog’s feet as the starting point for an idea about painting.

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Hannah Smith

She / They
www.hannahsmithfineart.com
@hanno_doom____
Lexington, KY

Where will you be traveling?
Linz & Vienna, Austria

What will you be traveling for?
I’ll be traveling to Linz, Austria with my colleague, Doreen Maloney, for this year’s Ars Electronica festival. I’m interested in connecting with other artists who implement electronics in their practice, innovative applications of technology in art, and observing the assured impact of AI at this year’s festival. I’m also traveling to Vienna to visit the Museumsquartier where I’m looking forward to connecting with numerous cultural initiatives housed within this institution, especially; Q21, the MQ Artists-in-Residence, and the talents animators of Tricky Women, Tricky Realities.

Can you give a short summary of your art practice?
I investigate the consequences in abuse of power, capitalism, and perception of norms through miniature landscapes, abstracted commercial signage and fictional machines. In doing so, unveiling the often unseen violence within power; powers that shape and confine our self-perception, that commodify our love, desire, dreams, our most essential human nature, powers that are nearly inescapable. My work is a search for a joyful path forward. Toward this end, I synthesize various methods of 3D fabrication to imagine spaces that fuse fact and fantasy, resistance and resilience, humor and hope for the future.

What are some of the inspirations for your practice?
In my everyday life, I find commercial signage to be particularly inspiring: it’s a varied representation of the cusp of our society where corporations meet and attempt to persuade humanity. I also find inspiration in the art of Tai Shani, Nathalie Djurberg and Monster Chetwynd as well as feminist philosophers Julia Kristeva and Hélène Cixous among many others.

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Kris Thompson

She / They
www.kristhompson.com
@kristhompsonart
Louisville, KY

Where will you be traveling?
Venice, Italy

What will you be traveling for?
I am traveling to Venice, Italy to attend the Venice Biennale.

Can you give a short summary of your art practice?
My current work involves making wall sculptures with fiber materials that I paint and weave. Incorporating experimental techniques that I develop, I manipulate and sculpt the woven material into landscapes and bodies of water. I am interested in incorporating sound and sensory elements into my pieces while concentrating on color, form and texture in my experimental processes.

What are some of the inspirations for your practice?
I am interested in the political and societal identity of women in today’s world and the history and activism of that identity. I am concerned with capturing nature in its quiet moments and the conservation of our waters and wilderness cultures.

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Azucena Trejo Williams

She / Her / Ella
www.trejowilliams.weebly.com
@trejowilliams
Campbellsville, KY

Where will you be traveling?
London, Venice

What will you be traveling for?
In London, I will be visiting Barbican Art Gallery, Whitechapel Gallery, Serpentine South, and Tate Modern to view installations using sound, paintings, sculptures, and fibers related to migrant and diasporic communities, cultural identity, and context of globalization. Attending the Venice Biennale allows for an efficient and condensed matter of experiencing contemporary artwork. The theme “Foreigners Everywhere” and representation by a Brazilian curator is geared towards my investigation of the Global South, Latin American artists while engaging in global discourse with artists will give an opportunity for me to reflect how I interpret and represent my making through my studio practice.

Can you give a short summary of your art practice?
In my studio practice, I integrate scientific inquiries, material investigations, research, observation of human interactions and methods to find connections within systems and patterns. What catches my attention is then unraveled through etymology, semantics, and semiotics to then rebuild the inquiry into a concept. My work results in multi-disciplinary approaches that straddle object, space, and a minimalist approach with a poetic sensibility.

What are some of the inspirations for your practice?
My art work fluxes within ecological concerns, relationships, marginalization, and scientific interventions. A variety of materials can be utilized in my artwork based on the context of the investigation including projections, natural material, fibers, ceramics, vinyl, and mirrors. My current artwork investigates generational ties to my ancestry through fiber art, specifically utilizing the backstrap loom, in which Guatemalan iconography is contemporized into a weaving. For this reason, it is important to see installations in London, and Venice focusing on various materials and methodologies related to my work and the considerations of Latin American context at the Biennale.

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