FORWARD ART PRIZE RECIPIENTS
2024 FORWARD ART PRIZE RECIPIENTS!
WINNERS:
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FINALISTS:
Angela Johnson, Heather Kohlmeier,
Karolina Romanowska, Sarah Stankey, Sarah Stellino
Rebecca Kautz is an interdisciplinary artist working across media. Her lush paintings and drawings of interior home settings explore identity, belonging and place, using candy colors that harken to 80s and 90s pop culture and modern art movements. Kautz holds a Master of FIne Arts and Master of Arts, from The University of Wisconsin - Madison, a Master of Arts Education from Argosy University-Chicago, and BFA from The School of The Art Institute of Chicago. Trained as an artist in Chicago at the turn of the twenty-first century, her work connects to the Surrealist movement, Expressionism, and Folk Art Traditions. Kautz’s imagery stems from her rural upbringing, family, and critical observations of American Culture.
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Ann Orlowski uses a clever play with line and color to manipulate perspective and spatial awareness. Her recent work references abstracted concepts of “home” by emphasizing the interiority of home spaces in a collection of forms that float together in space, like a complicated, subtle origami form. In her paintings, each piece deconstructs the visual world, breaking elements into simplified forms, and reconstructing these forms in new ways. Orlowski holds a BFA from the University of Northern Iowa, where she focused on printmaking. Since leaving the University setting in 2004, she has developed her painting practice and has shown her work throughout the region.
2023 FORWARD ART PRIZE RECIPIENTS!
WINNERS:
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FINALISTS:
Helen Klebesadel, T. L. Luke, Rebecca Kautz, Jessica Gutierrez, Issis Macias
Babette Wainwright discovered the pleasure and power of expressing herself with clay, making sculptures which are informed both by her African roots, and by the work of the pre-Colombian people of Haiti, the Arawaks. In 2000, she earned an MFA in Ceramics at UW Madison. She has since been working in both mediums, using the female image as a vehicle for conveying her sense of uprootedness, and her spirituality. Babette’s work is in various collections around the world.
Mary Bero fearlessly breaks all the traditional rules of fiber art. She deftly combines embroidery, painting, and sculptural elements to create exuberant works of art. She is a virtuoso of color. Her images are loosely connected, as if part of a daydream or, at times a nightmare. The various elements in the picture plane come together through a succession of small marks, and build to a cohesive whole.”Jane Sauer, Speaking with Threads exhibition.
Katherine Rosing’s immersive installations of translucent hanging fabrics, and the attention to detail in her surface-rich paintings evoke tangible associations with forests and the natural world. Her work is rooted in exploring the complex interrelationships between forests, watersheds, and the carbon and hydrologic cycles. Her nearly forest-scale environments encourage viewers to walk through the interactive spaces, offering a reflective experience to consider ecological issues. Katherine is ‘following in the great tradition of outstanding women fiber artists,” offers juror Simona Chazen. Gail Simpson, also a 2022 juror, sees that Rosing’s gorgeous installations “bring a measure of somber beauty to her consideration of environmental issues.”
Lilada Gee’s bright, bold graphic paintings celebrate and defend the joy of young black girls. She states her intention is to “use my art to be a light that shows the pathway out of the shadows of darkness to Black girls.” Juror Adriana Barrios describes her as “a valued voice and artist who is deeply invested in highlighting the experiences and stories of black girls and women through a multidisciplinary approach using public art, installation, and painting.” Gail Simpson sees Gee’s art as fitting into the social practice tradition and her work “offering a powerful, uplifting attitude to the community.”
2022 FORWARD ART PRIZE RECIPIENTS!
WINNERS:
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FINALISTS:
Sarah Stellino, Sara Meredith, J Myszka Lewis, Angela Johnson, Jennifer Bastian
2021 FORWARD ART PRIZE RECIPIENTS!
WINNERS:
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FINALISTS:
Lelia Byron, Leslie Iwai, Maria Amalia Wood, Rebecca Kautz, and Helen Hawley
Yeonhee Cheong, a Forward Art Prize finalist in 2020, received her MFA in Design Studies from UW-Madison. Yeonhee has strong interest in clothing and textile design and nature, and a deep desire to reframe the narrative about women and their value to society, which has often framed women's experiences as unimportant or less than. Yeonhee's intricate pastel and screen printed works center women's experiences amidst gorgeous botanical patters, given women center stage. Her work is a refreshing, whimsical commentary on women's experiences that have been negated or marginalized.
Alice Traore is an up and coming self-taught artist in the Madison art community, working primarily in watercolor. Traore creates vibrant paintings that contribute positively to the representation of Black people as dignified and free. Her work is a direct affront to the way Black people have been historically misrepresented, demeaned, or erased, and she seeks to change the narrative by creating portraits of family and friends who are dignified, confident, and self-possessed. Traore uses painting as a form of meditation, inviting viewers to positively recenter Black people, the way she has done so eloquently in her portraiture.
2020 FORWARD ART PRIZE RECIPIENTS!
WINNERS:
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FINALISTS:
Hannah O'Hare Bennett, Mary Bero, Yeonhee Cheong, Emily Leach, and Sylvie Rosenthal
Adriana Barrios creates multimedia work that explores the rapidly deteriorating coastal borderlands of San Diego due to climate change, while drawing on the great disparity of loss between impoverished communities and more affluent ones. Barrios’ work is infused with poetic gesture, rhythm and quietness that belies the social consequences of climate change and its injustice. Barrios works in collaboration with scientific researchers at Scripps Institute of Oceanography, combining printmaking, photography, video, and papermaking to give voice to coastal erosion, tidal patterns, wave activities and detrimental human activity.
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Angelica Contreras studied art in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico, before settling in Madison. Her bold layered portraits explore the complex relationship between identity, traditions and pop culture using collage and multiple painting techniques. Contreras seeks to bridge various communities with her work, and is a member of Colectivo Synapsis, a group of Latino artists that focus on social justice projects that impact communities in Southern Wisconsin. Contreras was also named a Forward Art Prize semi-finalist in 2019, which came with a $1,000 unrestricted grant from Dane Arts.
2019 FORWARD ART PRIZE RECIPIENTS
WINNERS:
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FINALISTS:
Hannah O'Hare Bennett, Angelica Contreras, Martha Glowacki, Emily Leach, and Helen Lee
Jennifer Angus creates highly provocative site-specific interior installations using hundreds of insects, painstakingly pinned to walls in patterned arrangements that suggest wallpaper and textiles. At a distance, her designs resemble an interior domestic space. However, upon closer inspection, viewers discover that the ornate patterns are formed of insects, causing feelings that fluctuate between wonder, disbelief, and awe. Angus’ goal is to elevate the status of insects, all of which play a vital role in the food chain, pollination, decomposition, and all of life itself. Recently cited as ‘one of the most important installation artists in the country,’ her solo exhibition is currently on view at the Museum of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg, FL.
Dakota Mace (Diné) is a Navajo artist who investigates cultural appropriation, identity, and her Native culture using photography and textiles. Mace re-contextualizes creation stories, cosmologies, and social structures, incorporating concepts of balance with nature in her work. Through her bold textural work, she creates complex pieces that comment on historical identities and lineage, creates a bridge to understanding Native American traditional practices, and reinforce a positive representation for Indigenous peoples. Mace’s work is currently on view at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art and at the Art + Literature Lab, in Madison, WI.
