Announcing the 2021-2022 Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program Residents
The Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2021-2022 award of year-long rent-free studio space in DUMBO, Brooklyn.
The recipients for 2021 are Nobutaka Aozaki, Beverly Acha, Jane Benson, Kim Brandt, Theresa Daddezio, J.A. Feng, Ronald Hall, Heidi Hahn, Athena LaTocha, Jeffrey Meris, Cy Morgan, Ebecho Muslimova, Louis Osmosis, Marianna Peragallo, Amelia Saul, D’Angelo Lovell Williams and Andrew Paul Woolbright.
The seventeen artists were selected from a record 1,900 applicants by a jury comprising Phong Bui, Matthew Deleget, Tara Donovan, Jennifer Packer and Barbara Takenaga. The residency period will last from September 2021 through August 2022, with an open studios weekend to be scheduled for spring 2022.
2021 Phillip Pearlstein Painter and the 2020 & 2021 Irving Sandler Prize
We are pleased to introduce the Philip Pearlstein Painter accolade. A dedicated member of the Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program Artist Advisory Committee, Philip Pearlstein co-founded the Marie Walsh Sharpe Space Program (now known as the Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program) in 1991 alongside Chuck Close, Janet Fish, Irving Sandler, and Robert Storr. Ronald Hall will be the first recipient of this distinction, which will identify an outstanding representational painter and ensure that a non-abstract painter be awarded a residency annually in recognition of Pearlstein’s ongoing commitment to referential art.
The recipients of the 2020 and 2021 Irving Sandler Prize are Victoria Roth ‘15 and Valerie Hegarty ‘04. Founded in 2019, the $2,500 prize is awarded annually to program alumni who share Irving’s concern for the “intentions, visions, and experiences” of artists.
Nobutaka Aozaki is a New York-based artist born in Kagoshima, Japan. He frequently combines performance and found objects in his practice, developed out of everyday interactions with people on the street. Nobutaka studied at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and the School of Visual Arts and holds an MFA from Hunter College. His work has been shown at Japan Society, Brooklyn Museum, Queens Museum, Sculpture Center, ISCP, and he has performed at the Whitney Museum. www.nobutakaaozaki.com
Beverly Acha makes abstract paintings, prints, and drawings that evoke shifting spatial, physical, and perceptual phenomena. Her work investigates experiences that elude language and the intangible sensorial and psychological experience of space through color, shape, and repetition. Acha received an MFA from Yale University, a BA from Williams College, and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Her work has been exhibited at DC Moore Gallery, LatchKey Gallery, El Museo del Barrio, Rubbery Factory, and Underdonk, among others. Acha is the recipient of the CUE Art Foundation Aon-CUE Artist Empowerment Award and has participated in several residencies including MacDowell, Lighthouse Works, and the Roswell Artist-in-Residence Program. Her work has been featured in New American Paintings and the Virginia Quarterly Review. www.beverlyacha.com
Jane Benson was born in the UK and received her BFA from Edinburgh College of Art. She received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, moving to Chicago on a Fulbright Scholarship and later to New York where she now lives and works. She teaches at Cornell University in the Department of Art. Known for a multidisciplinary, politically immersive, and research-based approach, the work of Benson spans the mediums of sculpture, sound, digital media and prints. Benson has exhibited in venues including MoMA PS1, New York; SculptureCenter, New York; Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati; Boca Raton Museum of Art, Florida; Pavel Zoubok Gallery, New York; Thierry Goldberg Gallery, New York. Benson’s work has been reviewed in publications such as the New York Times, the New Yorker, Artforum, Brooklyn Rail, Artnews, BOMB, and Art in America. She has been the recipient of numerous awards and residencies including the Pollack-Krasner Grant and Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Residency, and the Atlantic Center for the Arts residency. She is represented by Priska Pasquer, Cologne. Benson’s first monograph was published by Skira in March 2019. www.janebenson.net
Kim Brandt’s work has been presented by MoMA/PS1, MCA Chicago, The Kitchen, SculptureCenter, Pioneer Works, Issue Project Room, Bric, The Shed, Artists Space, Klaus Von Nichtssagend Gallery and AVA Gallery, among others. Her work has been supported by grants and fellowships from Princeton University, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, NYFA, Jerome Foundation and Brooklyn Arts Fund, and she has been an Artist in Residence at Chinati Foundation, MoMA/PS1, Djerassi, Movement Research, Bogliasco Foundation and Issue Project Room. Her writing has been published by The Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art Journal, Chinati Foundation, Sound American and Critical Correspondence. www.kimbrandt.net
Theresa Daddezio using the metaphor of a body as container, explores notions of consciousness, fragility, and sexuality within a language of painting and its history of abstraction. Through an embodied concept of time and place, she creates optical undulations of flatness, depth, vibrancy, and subtlety. The paintings share a compressed visual environment where shapes take near identifiable forms in a fleeting taxonomy of spatial and textural obfuscation that transforms marks into resemblances of flora, vessels, and earthen strata. These forms, evoking interior physiological spaces, areas of texture, and flattened color, heighten a disassociation of visual sensation. Commingling earthen tones contrast with synthetic palettes, complicating a natural and artificial physicality. Focusing on these spatial and chromatic negations, Daddezio construct an emergent and psychological site --manifestations of sensual experience--where the tangibility of the present entangles layers of memory. www.tmdaddezio.com
J.A Feng (b. Champaign, IL) received a BFA from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a MFA from Boston University, and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Feng lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. www.jafeng.art
Ronald Hall, Philip Pearlstein Painter, creates otherworldly spaces in which figures engage in and reflect upon the past, present, and future. Shifting between fiction and nonfiction in his narrative paintings, he distorts domestic interiors, plantations, and other environmental structures into eerie dreamscapes that invoke historical and contemporary issues involving race and social constructionism. Hall is a native of Pittsburgh where he attended the High School For Creative And Performing Arts, later studied illustration at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, also studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Ronald's work has been exhibited in numerous galleries and art museums internationally and throughout the US. Hall has been the recipient of many prestigious art awards and grants such as the Pollock-Krasner Grant and The Bronx Museum of the Arts AIM Program. www.ronaldhall.com
Heidi Hahn is a New York-based painter known for her vibrant palette, melting figures, and atmospheric moods. She received her Bachelor’s degree in Fine Art from Cooper Union in 2006, and her Master’s degree from Yale University in 2014. Hahn is an acting Professor of Painting and Drawing at Alfred University, NY, and has been the recipient of several awards, residencies, and fellowships, including the Jerome Foundation Grant, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture Residency, Madison, ME. She has exhibited nationally and internationally in numerous group and solo shows, including an exhibition at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, KS, in 2018 and an exhibition at the LSU Museum of Art, LA, in 2019. Hahn has been awarded several residencies and awards, including the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and a Jerome Foundation for the Arts Grant. Her work has also been reviewed in numerous publications, including The New York Times and Hyperallergic.
Athena LaTocha (b. Anchorage, Alaska) is an artist whose massive works on paper explore the relationship between human-made and natural worlds, in the wake of Earthworks artists from the 1960s and 1970s. The artist incorporates materials such as ink, lead, earth and wood, while looking at correlations between mark-marking and displacement of materials made by industrial equipment and natural events. Her works are inspired by her upbringing in the wilderness of Alaska. LaTocha’s process is about being immersed in these environments, while responding to the storied and, at times, traumatic cultural histories that are rooted in place. Her work has been shown across the country in places such as the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas; IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Santa Fe, New Mexico; CUE Art Foundation and Artists Space, New York City; South Dakota Art Museum, Brookings, South Dakota; New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, Louisiana; Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, NY; and the International Gallery of Contemporary Art in Anchorage, Alaska. LaTocha is the recipient of artist grants, residencies, and awards, among them the Eiteljorg Fellowship, Joan Mitchell, Wave Hill, and the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation. LaTocha received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and a Master of Fine Arts degree from Stony Brook University, New York. The artist divides her time between New York City and Peekskill, New York. www.athenalatocha.com
Jeffrey Meris (b. Haiti, 1991) is an artist who earned an AA in Arts and Crafts from the University of The Bahamas in 2012, a BFA in Sculpture from the Tyler School of Art in 2015, and an MFA in Visual Arts from Columbia University in 2019. Meris is a Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture 2019 alum. Meris has exhibited at White Columns in New York Studio 525 in New York The Luggage Store Gallery in San Francisco; Halle 14 in Leipzig, Germany; The National Art Gallery of the Bahamas, Mestre Projects, and the D'Aguilar Art Foundation, all in Nassau, Bahamas, among other venues. Meris was a 2020 NXTHVN Studio Fellow. www.jeffreymeris.com
Cy Morgan is an artist engaged in the process of making transient objects. Which for certain or uncertain periods of time, and with site-specific support, and through several tokens of exchange perform the function of and appear to be artworks. Until they don’t and are not, for any of several prescribed reasons. Work has been exhibited in New York, New Jersey, and Venice. Fellow at the LeRoy Neiman Center for Print Studies, NYC. Recipient of the Morty Frank Travel Fellowship, a Dean’s Travel Grant, a Visual Arts MFA from Columbia University, and a Creative Writing BA from Columbia College Chicago. www.cymorgan.com
Ebecho Muslimova (b. 1984; Makhachkala, Dagestan, RU) known for her raucous and sexually uninhibited character "Fatebe" creates paintings and works on paper that beguile the eye as much as they humor the mind. Fatebe's physical contortions and unpredictable quandaries play themselves out like performances on the canvas: each work depicts a single event that uncannily combines self-consciousness, comedy and vulnerability. Muslimova received her BFA at Cooper Union in New York, NY in 2010. Muslimova has exhibited at The Drawing Center, New York, NY; Magenta Plains, New York, NY; Galerie Maria Bernheim, Zürich, CH; White Flag Projects, St. Louis, MO; Room East, New York, NY; Kunsthalle St. Gallen, CH; Tanya Leighton, Berlin, DE; Delmes & Zander, Cologne, DE; and Ellis King, Dublin, IE. Muslimova created a large-scale mural for The 32nd Biennale of Graphic Arts, Ljubljana, Slovenia in 2017. Her work has been featured in publications such as Forbes, The New York Times, Artforum, Art in America, Mousse, Artnet, Hyperallergic, and Cura Magazine, among others. Muslimova is included in Jeffrey Deitch's book, Unrealism, featuring 27 artists and major essays by Johanna Fateman, Alison Gingeras, and Aria Dean. The artist currently lives and works in New York, NY.
Louis Osmosis (b. 1996; Brooklyn, NY) is an interdisciplinary artist working primarily in sculpture, drawing, performance, and video. Through a speculative approach to form, he explores notions of futility, fatigue, and self-discontinuity to delineate an affected and inverted mode of physics. He received his BFA from the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science & Art in 2018.
Marianna Peragallo is a Brazilian-American artist making anthropomorphic self-portraits embodying the cross-sections of love, labor, endurance, and support. She has exhibited her work in various locations, including Hales Gallery, New York, NY; Wassaic Project, Wassaic, NY; Somad Studio New York, NY; Transmitter Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; AIR Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; and Collar Works, Troy, NY. She has done public art projects with the New York Restoration Project at the Suffolk Street Community Garden, New York, NY; Art Lot, Brooklyn, NY; and Light Year Brooklyn, NY. Marianna was an artist in residence at the Byrdcliffe AIR program, Wassaic Project, Mass MoCA’s Assets for Artists residency, and the New Hope Colony Artist Residency. Marianna has a BFA from the University of the Arts, Philadelphia and an MFA from The School of Visual Arts, New York. www.mariannaperagallo.com
Amelia Saul is an artist and filmmaker based in New York. She works primarily in video and experimental narratives. She has exhibited and developed projects in New York at The Performing Garage, Momenta Art, BHQFU, and The Kitchen. Her last solo exhibition, Four Women, was at The Jacob Lawrence Gallery in Seattle. She has also shown her work in Berlin, Dresden, Taipei, and Hiroshima. She is a member of the filmmaking collective Minor Characters, is developing a film about the writer and mystic Etty Hillesum and is working on a piece of experimental fiction about theater. http://www.ameliasaul.net/
D’Angelo Lovell Williams (b. 1992, Jackson, Mississippi) is a Black, HIV-positive artist expanding narratives of Black and queer intimacy through photography. They earned their BFA in photography from Memphis College of Art in 2015, an MFA in photography from Syracuse University in 2018, and are a 2018 Skowhegan School of Art alum. They live and work in New York City. D'Angelo Lovell Williams has had four solo exhibitions with High Pictures Generation (2017-2020). The 2020 exhibition, Papa Don't Preach, was presented in collaboration with Janice Guy at her gallery in Harlem.
Andrew Paul Woolbright is an artist, curator, and critic based in Brooklyn, New York, and is an MFA graduate from the Rhode Island School of Design in painting. Woolbright is the founder and director of the gallery Below Grand, formerly Super Dutchess, located on the Lower East Side in New York. In addition to curating, he has written for Momus, E-Flux's Art and Education, Two Coats of Paint, and Whitehot Magazine. In 2021, Woolbright curated a survey show of the artist Kathy Goodell at the Dorsky Museum and will be curating shows based on his concept of Phantom Bodies with The Hole NYC and Vacancy Gallery in Shanghai. He has previously taught at the Rhode Island School of Design and currently teaches at SUNY New Paltz. www.andrewwoolbright.com
Victoria Roth, Irving Sandler Prize 2020, (b. 1986 Paris, France) currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She received her BA from Brown University in 2008 and her MFA from Columbia University in 2014. Recent group exhibitions include The Clear and the Obscure, Lulu, Mexico City, MX (2016), In the Mix, Hometown Gallery, Brooklyn, NY (2016), Vivid Bra, New York, NY (2016), SPRING/BREAK Art Show, New York, NY (2016). Roth was an artist in residence at the Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program Residency in Brooklyn, NY in 2015-2016. www.victoriaroth.com
Valerie Hegarty, Irving Sandler Prize 2021, (b. 1967, Burlington, VT) is a Brooklyn-based artist whose work frequently employs critical engagement with American history and addresses themes of memory, place, and art historical legacy through painting, sculpture, and large-scale installations. Previous solo exhibitions include Nicelle Beauchene, NY; Marlborough Gallery, NY; Locust Projects, Miami; Museum 52, London; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; and Guild & Greyshkul, NY. She has completed public commissions for the High Line in NYC and the Brooklyn Museum. Hegarty's work is included in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum, the Perez Art Museum Miami, the Saatchi Gallery, the New Britain Museum of American Art, the Portland Museum of Art, the Tang Museum, and the Wadsworth Atheneum.Hegarty received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and has received grants and awards from the Pollock Krasner Foundation, The New York Foundation for the Arts, the Rema Hort Mann Foundation, the Tiffany Foundation, and Campari NY. She has completed residences at LMCC, Marie Walsh Sharpe, PS 122, MacDowell, Yaddo, and Smack Mellon, and she served as the first Andrew W. Mellon Arts and the Common Good Artist-in-Residence at Drew University. www.valeriehegarty.com