The Dorothy Antoinette LaSelle Foundation has awarded its inaugural travel fellowship to Colleen Blackard and Cat Rigdon.
Earlier this year, the foundation launched its inaugural granting program for artists working and residing in Texas. The initiative is in acknowledgment of the necessity of travel for an artist’s practice. Dorothy Antoinette “Toni” LaSelle, the namesake of the foundation and a pioneer of Modernism in Texas, traveled to Europe in 1927-28, after completing her MA at the University of Chicago. During the trip, which was made possible through a study fund, she explored the art of England, Italy, and France.
Interested applicants were required to hold either a BA or BFA and to have participated in at least three group or solo exhibitions in the past three years. The fellowship awards $5,000 to fund artist research trips to support their artistic development.
Dr. Erika Doss, a Distinguished Professor in the Edith O’Donnell Institute of Art History at the University of Texas at Dallas served as this year’s guest juror. In a press release, she commented, “It was a pleasure to review the work of so many talented and diverse artists in Texas and to consider their inventive and imaginative proposals for future projects. That said, it was not easy to narrow the large field of applicants to a select few… Given that this is a travel fellowship, I was particularly interested in artist statements that related how and why the proposed travel would shape and direct their work.”
Learn more about the travel fellowship recipients below, via biographies provided by the foundation.
Colleen Blackard, “Memory of Stone”
Colleen Blackard received her MFA in printmaking from the University of Texas in Austin and lives and works in Austin. Blending methods in printmaking, drawing, and painting, she makes large-scale monotypes that link local landscapes with myths and legends and invite viewer participation. An Irish descendant, Ms. Blackard’s proposal involves travel to the west coast of Ireland from where her family emigrated. She plans to spend two months in Ireland’s southwestern coast, developing prints that capture the “atmospheres and textures” of ancient sites and create a “memory-scape” of shared experience.
Cat Rigdon, “Select Artifacts from a Warrior’s Tomb”
Cat Rigdon received her BFA in painting from Texas State University in San Marcos and lives and works in Dallas. An interdisciplinary artist, Ms. Rigdon combines ceramics and drawing in installations that consider how Cypriot antiquities were looted in the 19th century, and why they wound up in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the British Museum, among other collections. Growing up in Cyprus, Rigdon is familiar with the Mediterranean island’s much-trafficked cultural heritage. She plans to travel to Berlin’s Neues Museum to study its recently reopened Cyprus Hall, which features looted antiquities from the Cypro-Archaic period, and to draw on these materials in future projects.
