Artadia: The Fund for Art and Dialogue
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

MAY 15, 2007

LEADING CURATORS NAME TEN ARTADIA AWARDEES IN BOSTON

New York, NY – The tremendous vibrancy of the Boston cultural community was evident as three nationally prominent curators selected the ten Artadia Awardees in Boston through studio visits last week. After the visits in Boston from May 10 – May 12, 2007 jurors Pieranna Cavalchini (Curator of Contemporary Art, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston), Michael Darling (Contemporary Curator, Seattle Art Museum), and Rene de Guzman (Visual Arts Curator, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco) named the ten awardees – 3 Artadia Awards of $15,000 and 7 Artadia Awards of $1,500.

Artadia congratulates the winners of the Artadia Awards 2007 in Boston: Hannah Barrett, Gerry Bergstein, Jane Marsching, Helen Mirra, The National Bitter Melon Council (Hiroko Kikuchi, Jeremy Chi-Ming Liu, Andi Sutton), John Osorio-Buck, Vaughn Sills, Mary Ellen Strom, Stephen Tourlentes, and Xiaowei Chen.

Applications for the Artadia Awards were open to visual artists in all media and at any stage of their career working and living in the metro Boston area. The application was available online for three months during the winter through January 31, 2007. A record number nearly 700 applications were received in response to the open call to metropolitan Boston artists. Among the applications received were also a record number of media applications in multimedia, sound art, video art, and experimental film.

Artadia has partnered with local foundations and private patrons of the arts who recognize the importance of unrestricted funding to visual artists at the local level. Boston partners include an Anonymous family foundation, the LEF Foundation, and the NLT Foundation and the Mills Gallery at the Boston Center for the Arts (BCA). Boston is the fourth city in Artadia’s national awards program. The organization already administers successful programs and awards in Houston, San Francisco and Chicago. Laura Donaldson, Director of the Mills Gallery at the Boston Center for the Arts will curate the  an exhibition of the Awardees’ work during the summer of 2008 and a fully-illustrated catalogue will be published to commemorate the inaugural Artadia Awards in Boston.

Artadia Awards -- $15,000 Awardees

Helen Mirra is a minimalist artist, best known as a sculptor and sound artist. Mirra lives and works in Cambridge, MA and holds her MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Within the various forms that she operates, there is always a source material, or given upon which artistic decisions are made. Structure and logic is made evident in her work in poetic and measured ways. Using ambiguous spaces, and lyrical texts, Mirra encourages the viewer to appreciate metered logic and simple elegance.

The National Bitter Melon Council (Hiroko Kikuchi, Jeremy Chi-Ming Liu, Andi Sutton) is an artist collective that creates interactive public events that incorporate performance art and community development/activist practices. The NBMC was conceived in 2004, and stages events that use the foreignness of bitter melon and the concept of this flavor (that is also an emotion) of “bitter” to investigate situations that through bitterness create and promote an alternative basis for community and engagement.

Mary Ellen Strom, a video installation artist who has exhibited in various sites including railroad cars, mountain faces, and more traditional museum venues. Strom chooses sites, and subject matter in order to investigate their meaning and potential for dialogue with the work. Her recent projects include, Future Memory (2006); The Nudes (2005-6); and she is currently working on Day Labor: a video installation made in collaboration with choreographer Ann Carlson and four men who work as day laborers.

Artadia Awards -- $1,500 Awardees


Hannah Barrett paints invented portraits and compelling composites of historical figures and contemporary characters. Barrett situates her androgynous creatures in subtly rendered environments which suggest nineteenth century radical gender switches and improbable characters in drag. Barrett received her MFA in painting from Boston University.

Gerry Bergstein builds complex paintings and collages, his interest is “in illusion as content.” A recipient of numerous awards and honors in the Boston-area, Bergstein intricately weaves art historical referents, and scenarios with contemporary juxtapositions, with unlikely dark apocalyptic environments, and space-scapes. The resulting artworks are installations of collaged material, unique paintings, and editioned photographs of the collages.

Xiaowei Chen studied Chinese art and folk culture as well as design and painting at the Institute of Graphic Communication, Beijing. She has exhibited her ink drawings, and film projects in both Bejing and the Boston area. Wei’s work is a subtle blend of traditional Chinese brush painting techniques with contemporary ideas of figuration, installation, and subtle shifts in scale.

Jane Marsching is a photographer, sculptor, and video artist. A graduate of the School of Visual Arts in New York City, she collaborates with scientists from all over the world for her current project Arctic Listening Post. Pulling content from various sources including the internet, science fiction illustrations, and historical source material, she weaves the complexities of the “real” visions and representations of the North Pole and Arctic with artistic sense of imagination and “narrative wonder”.

By engaging the discourse of both short-term and long-term survival, John Osorio-Buck encourages his audience to think outside the norms towards positive change. Osorio-Buck employs the complex concept of ‘utopia’ as the foil in his work. He has developed pirate radio stations, mobile urban shelters, rafts, and temporary structures to engage a broad audience and encourage dialogue about sustainable living and societal inequities.

Photographer Vaughn Sills has been documenting African-Americans in the South and their backyard gardens for nearly twenty years. The gardens represent a distinctive aesthetic that was brought to America by African slaves and exhibit a deeply embedded tradition that has survived geographic and social transition, poverty, and time. The ‘yard’ serves many purposes to her subjects: it is functional (providing food); it is a place to socialize and be creative; and it is also mystical.

Stephen Tourlentes teaches at the Massachusetts College of Art and the Isaldn Center for the Arts in Skopelos, Greece. His current series of black and white photographs explore the sites and geography of the prison industry in the United States. Tourlentes’ eerie nightscapes capture the light pollution and menacing aura of the penitentiaries. 

About Artadia: The Fund for Art and Dialogue

Artadia was originally founded in 1997as the 501(c)(3) nonprofit called The ArtCouncil, by investment banker and art collector Christopher E. Vroom as a response to the demise of the National Endowment for the Arts’ artist fellowships. The first awards were given in San Francisco, where Vroom was living at the time. Chicago was added as a program city in 2001. In 2003, Artadia added Houston to its roster, and Artadia launched a Boston program in 2007. Once Artadia commits to a community, it returns every other year to run its awards programs and, on the off years, it co-sponsors a public program with a local institution. Started as an individual’s philanthropy, Artadia is now expanding its base of support by recruiting art patrons from across the United States to join its giving circle and board of directors which provides governance and covers administrative costs. Artadia has been based in New York City since late 2002. 

Artadia Awards are determined through a jury process that employs nationally prominent curators, artists, and critics. Artadia partners with local foundations and individuals in the host cities from to raise funds that go directly to artists in that community. Artadia matches those contributions by providing the funds that administer the program. Once an artist receives an Artadia Award, he or she becomes part of a national network of support forever. Since its founding, Artadia has awarded over $2.0 million to more than 200 artists in its participating cities.

Over the next year, Artadia will also present events and programming in New York, Atlanta, and Miami. Upcoming programs are intended to not only demonstrate the tremendous creativity in partner communities, but also facilitate exchange and dialogue nationwide.

For press inquiries and information on Artadia, contact news@artadia.org.

For information on becoming a partner or friend of Artadia, contact:
Lila Kanner, Program Manager: lilakanner@artadia.org
(212) 727-2233 x 207.