Finalists For The Janet & Walter Sondheim Artscape Prize

The Baltimore Office of Promotion & The Arts announces the finalists for the eighth annual Janet & Walter Sondheim Artscape Prize.  The finalists are Gabriela Bulisova, Larry Cook, Caitlin Cunningham, Nate Larson, Louie Palu and Dan Steinhilber.  The competition awards a $25,000 fellowship to assist in furthering the career of a visual artist or visual artist collaborators living and working in the Greater Baltimore region.  The Janet & Walter Sondheim Artscape Prize is held in conjunction with the annual Artscape juried exhibition and produced by the Baltimore Office of Promotion & The Arts in partnership with the Walters Art Museum and the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA).  The competition winner is announced during an award ceremony and reception on Saturday, July 13, 2013 at 7pm at the Walters Art Museum, located at 600 North Charles Street.

For the first time since the inception of the competition, the finalists’ works of art will be exhibited in the special exhibition galleries at the Walters Art Museum on Saturday, June 29 through Sunday, August 11, 2013.  The winner of the competition is selected from the exhibition at the Walters Art Museum, after a review of the installed art and an interview with each finalist by the jurors.  The 2013 competition jurors are Caroline Busta, Jenny Schlenzka and Beverly Semmes.

2013 JANET & WALTER SONDHEIM ARTSCAPE PRIZE FINALISTS

Gabriela Bulisova (Alexandria, VA)

Gabriela Bulisova is a documentary photographer and multimedia artist based in Washington, DC.  Her work focuses on underreported and overlooked stores affecting marginalized populations around the world and in the United States.  She has received numerous awards for her work including the National Press Photographers Association’s Short Grant, Open Society Institute’s Moving Walls 18, the Corcoran College of Art + Design Faculty Award, and a Puffin Foundation Grant.  Her work has been exhibited extensively in the Washington, D.C. area where she is a member of the Metro Collective Photo Agency.  She is a 2005 graduate of the Master of Fine Arts program in photography and digital imaging at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) and teaches photojournalism at the Corcoran College of Art + Design. 

Larry Cook (Landover Hills, MD)

Larry Cook, a 2012 MFA graduate of The George Washington University (GWU), is a photographer and video artist who has been featured in exhibitions in several galleries in the Washington, DC and Maryland areas, including those at The Corcoran Gallery of Art, the University of Maryland, the Brentwood Arts Exchange, Hillyer Art Space, the Smithsonian and Gallery 102 at GWU.  He is an adjunct professor of photography at GWU and a proud teacher for Project Create, a non-profit organization that provides art education for children experiencing poverty and homelessness.

Caitlin Cunningham (Baltimore, MD)

Caitlin Cunningham’s sculptural installations are currently the focus of a solo exhibition entitled Tan Penis Island at sophiajacob, a gallery located in Baltimore, MD.  Her work has also been featured in exhibitions locally as well as nationally, including those at Nudashank, Baltimore, MD; 48 Bowery, New York, NY; Space 1026, Philadelphia, PA; Fountain Art Fair, New York, NY; Civilian Art Projects, Washington, D.C., among others.  Her work is included in the collections of The Baltimore Museum of Art in Baltimore, MD and the Museum of Contemporary Craft in Portland, OR.  Cunningham received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in 2005, where she majored in sculpture and painting.

Nate Larson (Baltimore, MD)

Nate Larson is a member of the full-time faculty at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), and serves on the board of the Society of Photographic Education. His work with photographic media, artist books and narrative video has been widely exhibited across the U.S. and internationally. Numerous publications have reviewed and published his projects, including WIRED, NPR’s The Picture Show, The New York Times, Frieze, Utne Reader, The Washington Post andART PAPERS. His work is included in the collections of the Portland Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Cleveland Institute of Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago. Larson earned a Master in Fine Arts from the Ohio State University in 2002, and a Bachelor of Arts from Purdue University in 2000.  Larson will additionally be an upcoming artist-in-residence at the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation in 2013.

Louie Palu (Baltimore, MD)

Louie Palu is an award-winning documentary photographer whose work has appeared in publications and exhibitions internationally. He has been awarded numerous honors including an Alexia Grant, Aftermath Project Grant, Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting grant and is a Bernard L. Schwartz Fellow with the New America Foundation. Louie’s work has been featured in The New York Times, TIME, The Atlantic and the BBC. His work is in the permanent collections of many museums and archives including The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, George Eastman House, Portland Art Museum, National Gallery of Canada and has been exhibited world-wide. Palu is best known for his long-term studies of social and political issues, which includes a five-year project on Kandahar, Afghanistan, a project on the prison in Guantanamo Bay and a recent body of work covering the drug war in Mexico.

Dan Steinhilber (Washington, D.C.)

Dan Steinhilber, a 2002 Master of Fine Arts graduate of American University, lives and works in Washington DC.  His sculptural installation based artwork has been featured in dozens of exhibitions throughout the United States.  These include solo exhibitions at the Kreeger Museum, Washington, D.C.; Socrates Sculpture Park, Long Island City, NY; the Baltimore Museum of Art, in Baltimore, MD; the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Houston, TX; the Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh, PA; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C., among several others; and in group exhibitions at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams, MA; Gallery Four, Baltimore, MD; D.U.M.B.O. Arts Center, Brooklyn, NY; Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, NB; the Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, IA, to name just a few.  His artwork has also been highlighted in numerous publications such as The Washington Post, Baltimore’s City Paper, Sculpture magazine, ARTnews, and The New York Times Style Magazine.  Steinhilber has been awarded a Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant and a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship.

The 2013 Janet & Walter Sondheim Artscape Prize is made possible through the generous support of the Abell Foundation, Alex. Brown & Sons Charitable Foundation, Charlesmead Foundation, Ellen Sondheim Dankert, France-Merrick Foundation, Hecht-Levi Foundation, Legg Mason, M&T Bank Foundation, Henry & Ruth Blaustein Rosenberg Foundation, John Sondheim and Whiting-Turner Contracting.

For more information on the Janet & Walter Sondheim Artscape Prize, call 410-752-8632 or visit www.artscape.org. 

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