Two Washington State University faculty and two alumni are among 62 recipients, out of 603 applicants, of 2012 Grants for Artist Projects (GAP) of up to $1,500 from Artist Trust, a Washington state nonprofit arts organization.
The faculty awardees are Kevin Haas, professor of fine arts, and Christopher Arigo, assistant professor of English. Alumni winners are Lauren Greathouse (B.F.A. ’03; B.A. ’03, English) and Dane Youngren (B.F.A. ’11).
The goal of the funding is a repeated and consistent investment to support and encourage individual artists’ projects in all disciplines in order to enrich community life throughout Washington.
Criteria for selection is the artistic excellence of the artwork, the project proposal, and the feasibility of the project.
Haas, who also was awarded a GAP in 2002, received the 2012 grant to cover travel expenses, studio fees, and material needed to complete a printmaking residency at the Frans Masereel Centrum, Belgium.
His work depicts the ubiquitous places found near the highways and interstates that surround and interconnect cities. He will be working with drawings created from video shot while driving around the sprawl of various U.S. cities.
Arigo’s award will help defray the cost of submitting “Myths and Miscellany,” his third collection of poetry, to contests and of completing a fourth collection.
In “Myths and Miscellany” he departs from earlier works, which were more experimental in form and content, and moves toward a simpler lyric form. He explores the human relationship with the natural world, the myths we create about it, and how the massive rifts between “human” and “nature” can be minimized.
Youngren’s grant will help with costs associated with his solo exhibition at the Kolva-Sullivan Gallery in Spokane of a large ceramic railroad trestle that will span up to 36 feet and rest on a wood and steel base.
He engages with commonplace structures of the built environment that serve transportation, industrial, and other functional purposes. He creates sculptures that call attention to these architectural structures as well as the antithesis—the subsequent destruction and abandonment that comes with obsolete buildings and industrial endeavors.
Greathouse received a GAP to establish a book of photographic work celebrating the aesthetic value of Washington’s state parks and drawing attention to the effect of mankind on natural landscapes. Her goal is to also publish the book on a wider scale through a local publisher.