The Nasher Sculpture Center .
The Nasher Sculpture Center announced today that the winners of the 2020 Nasher Artist Grants are Sarah Ayala, Sara Cardona, Janeil Engelstad, Julia Jalowiec, David Jeremiah, Cynthia Mulcahy, Nancy Newberry, Darryl Ratcliff, Raul Rodriquez, and Third Space DFW. The Nasher Grants program supports North Texas artists, and funds may be used for purchasing equipment and materials, travel or research, studio space, or artist-run curatorial projects.
As reported here in Glasstire in April, this year the open-call Nasher Artist Grants, formerly the Nasher Microgrants, will offer 10 grants, up from 5, in the amount of $2,000 each. The number of grants have been increased in order to meet the artists’ needs for support due to the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as to continue studio and curatorial projects.
States artist and grantee Sara Cardona in an email to Glasstire: “I am thrilled to be part of a mix of progressive artists, a couple for whom I have a deep admiration — that are making powerful work. I think the range of projects speaks to a thoughtful selection process — not all the work is based in social practice — and it’s important that they are recognizing a variety of ways artists might be working through this intense time.”
Another grantee, Raul Rodriguez, says, “I am very thankful for the support of the Nasher Sculpture Center and their effort to respond to the circumstances affecting artists. It makes me happy being able to turn around and use my own platform, Deep Red Press, to do the same.”
States Nasher Director Jeremy Strick in the announcement: “This year has been a very trying one for artists of all disciplines due to the pandemic, so we are thrilled to offer the Nasher Artist Grants to help aid the livelihood and artistic pursuits of artists in North Texas. We’re especially delighted to offer twice as many grants than previous years, helping provide necessary aid during a time of crisis to even more artists. We are so grateful to the individual sponsors who committed to making these additional grants possible, and we look forward to seeing the good work that comes from it.”
The 2020 jurors included artists and previous Nasher Artist Grants winners, Nida Bangash and Arnoldo Hurtado, Nasher Program Advisory Board member Allison V. Smith, Berlin-based artist Bettina Pousttchi, Nasher Associate Curator Leigh Arnold, and Nasher Curator of Education Anna Smith.
The following projects by the award recipients will be funded. Via the Nasher :
Sarah Ayala, Mexico, 2019, Ink & pencil on map, 26×34.
Sarah Ayala, Fort Worth
Ayala will use her background in sign painting to a create artwork on maps representing areas affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and the ripple of the virus throughout the globe: global responses, environmental impacts, resources affected, deaths, and more importantly, recoveries.
Sara Cardona, Dallas
With her Nasher Artist Grant funds, Cardona will deploy her practice of collage-making to create large-scale, animated sculptural forms, which explore “how our system of consumption is itself an organism, and one that has directly led to the virus which now threatens that very system of capital and consumption.”
Janeil Engelstad, Dallas
Engelstad plans to interview people at the front lines of the pandemic— doctors, nurses, scientists, and workers in essential industries, as well as people working in the policy and cultural sectors—and develop a multi-form project to engage people and spaces at the heart of the pandemic, outside of galleries and museums.
Julia Jaloweic, McKinney
Jaloweic will use her Nasher Artist Grant to fund the completion of a project called I Will Save You from A Cultwhich involves sculptures, ‘non-evil’ propaganda, and paintings aimed at freeing viewers from cults of thought and mind control, an imaginative gesture of the artist standing with arms open to everyone trapped in destructive thought cycles.
David Jeremiah, Dallas
Jeremiah will use his grant funds to support a durational performance called Offering which seeks to investigate the cost of grief by commemorating the deaths from the 2016 shootings in downtown Dallas by Michael Xavier and his own subsequent death by a police robot.
Cynthia Mulcahy, Dallas
Funds from the Nasher Artist Grant would be partially used for Mulcahy to research and develop further iterations of her current body of work, War Garden, a playful but critical examination of American militarism.
Nancy Newberry, Dallas
With her Nasher Artist Grant, Newberry will purchase a large format printer so she can continue her ongoing series photographed in Texas and Mexico, Character Studies, a contemporary Spaghetti Western staged at the Texas-Mexico border investigating notions of nationalism and community.
Darryl Ratcliff, Dallas
Ratcliff will use his grant to fund legal research seeking to tie institutional promises to Dallas’ communities of color to the Nasher Collection.
Raul Rodriguez, Richland Hills
Rodriguez plans to use the Nasher Artist Grant to purchase needed supplies like an exhibition quality inkjet printer, recommended inks and photographic paper for printing, as well as to offer the service of printing to other artists.
Third Space DFW, ArtsGaggle, 2019, a house installation, drag performance, music, live paint, digital, Illustration.
Third Space DFW (Antonio Mercado, Kim Nguyen, Chris Bermejo, Norma Gonzalez, Saria Almidani)
The art collective Third Space DFW will translate what was to be their first gallery exhibition, Once a Day Swallow a Small Sun– now cancelled due to the pandemic– into a catalog. The catalog of works will explore queer health—mental, physical, sexual, and emotional.
The 2020 Nasher Artist Grants are made possible by support from Ann and Charles Eisemann, with additional support provided by Michael Corman and Kevin Fink, Michael Corris, Lucilo Peña and Lee Cobb, Ginny and Connor Searcy, Wendy and Jeremy Strick, The Donna Wilhelm Family Fund, and Nasher Members and Donors.
For more information, please visit the Nasher’s website here.
