Announcing the 2019 Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program Awardees
The Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2019-2020 award of a year-long rent-free studio space in DUMBO, Brooklyn.
The recipients for 2019 are Yasi Alipour, Patricia Ayres, Dana Buhl, John Edmonds, Jonathan Paul Gillette, Glenn Goldberg, Buhm Hong, Anthony Iacono, Case Jernigan, Tom McGlynn, Nicholas Moenich, Avery Nelson, Joan Oh, Jason Saager, Mira Schor, Don Voisine, and Tarwuk (Bruno Pogacnik Tremow and Ivana Vuksic).
The seventeen visual artists were selected from a record 1,700 applicants by a jury comprising Ellen Altfest, Phong Bui, Deborah Kass, Philip Pearlstein, and Daniel Turner. The residency period will last from September 2019 through August 2020, with an open studios weekend to be scheduled for spring 2020.
2019 Awardees
Yasi Alipour explores queer issues within a wider Middle Eastern context. Her research-based practice spans sculpture, installation, performance, drawing, writing, lectures, and experimentation—probing personal history to parse issues around political instability and interrupted histories. Alipour holds an MFA from Columbia University, a BFA from the School of Visual Arts, and a BS from the University of Tehran. Her work has been exhibited at Times Square Space, the Museum of Contemporary Art Vojvodina (Serbia), the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery at Columbia University, False Flag, Flatiron Prow, Art Space, Art Therapy Project, and Pulse Contemporary Art Fair (Miami). www.yasamanalipour.com
Patricia Ayres’ practice combines the artist’s background in fashion design with sculpture—drawing on themes of transgression and punishment. Using familial histories involving the structures and symbols of organized religion and the US penal system, Ayres analyzes how the body may be constrained physically and psychologically. Ayres holds an MFA from Hunter College, a BFA from Brooklyn College, and an Associate’s Degree from the Fashion Institute of Technology. Her work has been included in recent exhibitions at Koenig & Clinton Gallery, Thomas Hunter, and the International Print Center. She has participated in with residencies at MASS MoCA, Takt Kunstprojektraum, and Sculpture Space (Utica). www.patriciaayres.com
Dana Buhl is an artist working in original and found imagery, objects, and video. Her practice examines the connection between picture, image, and information with site specific installations that lead viewers through a guided contemplation of invisible systems, both man-made and natural. Buhl holds an MFA from Columbia University, a BFA form Arizona State University, and was a resident of the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Independent Study Studio Program. www.danabuhl.info
John Edmonds is a photographer, creating works that reference art history, politics and pop culture. His practice mines the performative aspect of photography to upend the documentarian nature of the medium, while addressing the formal and conceptual concerns of art historical discourse. Edmonds received his MFA from the Yale School of Art and a BFA from the Corcoran College of Art & Design. His work was included in recent exhibitions at David Castillo Gallery, Diggs Gallery at Winston-Salem University,and The Artist’s Institute. Edmonds’ work is held in public and private collections including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, FOAM Museum Amsterdam Library, and the George Eastman Museum.
Jonathan Paul Gillette is a painter whose serial works probe the pursuit of an idea or concept. Rather than focusing on repetition itself, his practice is an effort to see how the first in a series appears among its counterparts. Gillette holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BA from Union University. jonnypaulgillette.com
Glenn Goldberg is a painter whose work deals with icons and characters, expressed in dialogue with the decorative arts. Textiles, cloth, and patterns co-exist within his painting language, casting his most well-known subjects—birds, dogs, flowers, and cells—in scenes that embody complexity, awkwardness, and vibrancy. Goldberg studied at the New York Studio School and received his MFA from Queens College. He has been represented by Willard and Knoedler Galleries, and has received grants from the Edward Albee Foundation, the Guggenheim Fellowship, and the National Endowment for the Arts. His work is included in the National Gallery and the Metropolitan Museum collections, among others.
Buhm Hong explores memory though a multidisciplinary practice including video, sculpture, installation, and drawing. His work is multi-layered, with a focus on exposing the structure of memories in the three-dimensional world. Hong holds two MFAs from the School of Visual Arts and a BFA from Hongik University (Seoul). Hong received a 2014 BRIC media fellowship, and his work has been widely exhibited, including solo shows at ‘Old house’ Space CAN (Seoul), Aando Fine Art Gallery (Berlin), and Total Contemporary Museum (Seoul), among others. buhmhong.com
Anthony Iacono’s interdisciplinary studio practice consists of video, sculpture, photography, artist books, and most recently, painted collages inspired by printmaking techniques. His work recontextualizes quotidian objects, reconfiguring fruit, plants, and curtains to replace their original functions with those of physical pleasure and perversity. Iacono studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and holds an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University and a BFA from the School of Visual Arts. His work has been exhibited at P.P.O.W. Gallery, Duplex, and Zevitas Marcus. Iacono is the recipient of the Toby Devan Lewis Fellowship Award and the Robert M. Washburn Award for the Arts.
Case Jernigan works at the intersection between storytelling, drawing, collage, and animation. His short films are composed of paper, drawings, and cutouts that have been digitally manipulated—imbuing his characters and storylines with an unsettling charm. He holds an MFA from the New York Studio School and a BA from the College of William and Mary. Jernigan has held residencies at The Center for Book Arts and the Saltonstall Foundation, screened work at The Santa Fe Film Festival and #11 Berlin, and is the recent recipient of a Screen Australia grant. www.casepaint.com
Tom McGlynn is an artist, writer, and independent curator whose paintings derive from social semiotics. Exploring the effects of form and color, McGlynn’s work is interested in the morphing of commercial signage into cyphers of phenomenal experience—minimalist, abstract arrangements of color. He holds an MFA from Hunter College and a BFA from the Ramapo College of New Jersey. McGlynn’s work is represented in national and international collections including the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum, The Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and The Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum of the Smithsonian. www.tommcglynnart.com
Nicholas Moenich’s work borrows from art history, mythology, punk rock, and science fiction to create eerie psychological spaces. His complex and personal formal language is situated between figuration and abstraction—creating paintings that simultaneously possess material presence and pictorial space full of sinister humor. Moenich holds an MFA from Hunter College and a BFA from the Cleveland Institute of Art. He has exhibited at Underdonk, D’Agostino & Fiore, and Disturb the Neighbors. www.nicholasmoenich.com
Zoe Avery Nelson is a painter who explores the temporality of embodiment. Painted in bright, metallic palettes, their work combines figurative, abstract, and symbolic visual language, examining the resulting contradictions, fragmentation, and tension of juxtaposing divergent forms of representation. Nelson received an MFA from Columbia University, a BA from Barnard College, and was a participant in the Norfolk Program at Yale University. Nelson’s work has been shown at Rubber Factory (NYC), The Ice House (Garrison), and The Lighthouse Works Gallery (Fishers Island), among others. zoenelson.com
Joan Oh’s work focuses on intimacy and labor. She explores identity in relation to economic labor by examining the ramifications of capitalist society—expressed through video and installation works. Oh received an MFA from the University of Pennsylvania and her BFA from Corcoran College of Art & Design. Her work has been exhibited at Vox Populi, Pilot Projects, and Cody Dock (London). joanoh.com
TARWUK (Bruno Pogacnik Tremow & Ivana Vukšic) are a collaborative duo from Croatia, with a singular practice that focuses on storytelling through sculpture and painting. Their works challenge assumptions by imposing personal, speculative stories that create a complex and generative system of meaning, materializing their personal histories into objects. Together, they hold an MA from the University of Zagreb, an MFA from the Academy of Fine Arts Zagreb, and an MFA from Columbia University. www.tarwuk.com
Jason Saager is a painter whose work explores landscape as a site littered with scientific falsehoods, nonsense, and roads leading to nowhere. This fantastical approach investigates the genre of landscape painting while incorporating contemporary ideas that challenge traditional understandings of the relationship between humans and nature. He earned an MFA from Hunter College and a BFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His work has been exhibited at Washington Project for the Arts, Life on Mars Gallery, and Paul the Apostle Church in New York. Saager has been an Artist in Residence at Pioneer Works, as well as the International School of Painting, Drawing, and Sculpture in Montecastello di Vibio, Italy. www.jasonsaager.com
Mira Schor is an artist working at the intersection of politic and theory, and she is noted for her for her contributions to feminist art history. Her works center on the representation of language in drawing and painting, and her current work focuses on the experience of living in a moment of radical inequality, austerity, and accelerated time, set against the powerful pull of older notions of time, craft, and visual pleasure. Schor holds an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts and a BA from New York University. Her work has been widely exhibited, including at the Hammer Museum, P.S.1, The Neuberger Museum, The Jewish Museum, and The Aldrich Museum. She is the recipient of awards in painting from the Guggenheim, Rockefeller, Marie Walsh Sharpe, and Pollock-Krasner Foundations, as well as the College Art Association’s Frank Jewett Mather Award in Art Criticism. www.miraschor.com
Don Voisine is an abstract painter whose works are inspired by the architectural language of space. His oil paintings explore sculptural and spatial vocabularies, with a varied and reductive language of overlapping geometric shapes. Voisine studied at the Concept Center for Visual Studies, the Portland School of Art, and Maine College of Art. His long and noted career has included exhibits with the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, McKenzie Fine Art, and Spazio Isolo (Verona), and his with works are held in the collections of Yale University Art Gallery, the Cincinnati Art Museum, the Peabody Essex Museum, and the Portland Museum of Art, among others. donvoisine.com